RETURN MERCHANDISE AUTHORIZATION (aka RMA) FEATURE NOTES

Skip ahead to

• What is RMA?
• How does it work?
• What can be configured?
• How do I configure and Inquiry form to be an RMA Form?
• How can I get RMA installed on my Web Shop Manager site?
• Additional Comments

What is RMA?

The Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) feature was requested by Client Titan Nelson and developed inside the Web Shop Manager platform Framework, there is no external integration with another system for this feature. The current implementation of RMA allows a client to setup an online form to provide a way for their customers to return products from their orders. 

How does it work?

When enabled, RMA will allow users to return products from a previous order by adding a new line item to each product when viewing previous order history. With the current implementation of RMA, a customer can only add products in one way:

• A single item
• All products in an order

This feature uses the existing Web Shop Manager form functionality to create an RMA form and therefore a new Inquiry Form will need to be created by each client which wants to use this feature.

Upon submission of the RMA form, an email will be sent to the email address defined by the client on the identified RMA form, while a success message (defined in the inquiry form editor) is displayed to the user.

Auto-filling fields

When the RMA feature is enabled, the following changes occur:

1. On the backend, the client can designate one of the inquiry forms as an "RMA" form, making full use of the autofill field types.
2. Once a form has been designated as an RMA form:
   1. On the frontend, a consumer will have the opportunity to click on a link in their completed orders to start an RMA via the designated inquiry form. That form will try to fill in as much information as it can automatically if those autofill fields are used in the form description.
   2. The site's /rma-form.html link will be active. If navigated to directly (no orders or items passed in the URL), a blank copy of the designated RMA form will appear for a consumer to fill out without any autofilled fields.

In order to use the feature, Web Shop Manager requires that an inquiry form is created and designated to be the RMA Inquiry form. If a form has not be designated an RMA form, consumers will not see links to return previous orders, and navigating to the /rma-form.html page will generate a 404 error. If a user is logged in an an order number is specified, items from that order will be returned. If a single item or list of items is specified in addition to the order, information about those specific items will be pre-filled in the RMA form where data is available.

With this RMA feature, the inquiry forms have some additional field types that are a bit special. The new fields include:

• Billing Address – Displays a collection of fields for capturing a customer's billing address. If there is an order specified and a billing address attached to the order being returned, the form will attempt to auto-fill that entry with the address in the order.
• Shipping Address – Displays a collection of fields for capturing a customer's shipping address. If there is an order specified and a shipping address attached to the order being returned, the form will attempt to auto-fill that entry with the address in the order. 
• Order Number – Displays the WSM order number of the order with the item being returned.  If no order is specified, the default value from the inquiry form will be displayed (if a default value is defined).
• Part SKU – Displays the SKU for the item being returned. If an order and/or item is specified, this field will auto-fill with the SKU of the item being returned. If no order is found, the default value defined in the inquiry form will be displayed (if a default value is defined).
• Quantity – Displays the quantity of items to return. If an order and/or item is specified, this field will auto-fill with the number of items of this SKU ordered. If no order is found, the default value defined in the inquiry form will be displayed (if a default value is defined).
• Text (current date) – Displays a read-only text field containing the current date in the WSM server timezone.
• Order Memo – Displays the contents of the order memo field if there are any. If an order is not specified, the default value from the inquiry form will be displayed (if a default value is defined).
• Billing Purchase Order –  Displays the purchase order number associated with an order's payment information. If an order is not specified, or a PO is not associated with the payment, this value will display the default value from the inquiry form (if a default value is defined). If multiple billing entries exist for an order with separate PO numbers, this field will contain a comma separated list of values including each PO. 

Row items

This new feature also brings the concept of "row items" vs "form items" to the inquiry forms. While all of the fields can be included once in a form, many fields (not billing/shipping addresses, product, upload, subscription, email, recaptchas, custom html) can also be included in a repeated set of identical rows. For example, an RMA form might include shipping and billing addresses once per form, then a list of rows, each containing product SKU, quantity returned, and a reason for return. To designate a field as a "row item", check the box in the inquiry editor.  When displaying the form to the user, the form items will appear in the order listed in the inquiry editor, with the rows showing up in the spot where the first "row item" is encountered. after all of the fields that are row items are displayed, the rest of the fields will show up just once in the form. This might allow someone to define an RMA form with some contact information, a series of rows for products, then some additional comments and a submit button at the end of the form. 

What can be configured?

The RMA feature really has two items which can be configured. 

1. The RMA form itself has the ability for a high level customization based on how a client wants to define the form and the data they want to collect.
2. The maximum number of product rows which will show when the RMA form is created.

 

For the second item, an RMA form will always display a maximum number of product rows which are defined in the System → Configuration → General tab: 

There is one caveat to this field. The initial RMA form can go above this count if the customer is returning an entire order and the number of products exceeds the default maximum. The system will automatically scale to include all products in the order.

The "Return Entire Order" link the customer would need to click on a completed order is highlighted in the image below:

How do I configure an Inquiry form to be an RMA Form?

Since RMA leverages the WSM form functionality, a WSM Inquiry form will still need to be defined to support the RMA feature. You can create a new RMA form by going to Content → Inquiry Forms and clicking on the  "Add Inquiry Form" button.

 

To make this Inquiry Form the RMA form, you will need to check the "RMA Form" enable button:

 

Suggested RMA form configuration options :

• Email To*: <someone in your returns department> 
• Enable: Always confirm field deletion
• Enable: Always confirm option loss
• URL Hidden : NO
• Hidden : NO
• Login Required : NO

*recommended as mandatory

 

For any fields which are to be used by every product in the RMA form, the checkbox "Row Item" needs to be checked. The feature uses this checkbox to know which items need to be repeated for every product. If this checkbox is not listed, the information will only be displayed once and will not repeat for each line in the form.

 

An example RMA form could have the following layout:

Name

E-mail

Billing Address

Shipping Address

Order Nuber

SKU

Return Reason

Submit Button