B2B returns are rarely a refund to a card. They are a credit against the account, sometimes with a restocking fee, sometimes with a replacement shipped before the original comes back, sometimes with a supplier warranty claim behind them. The financial event belongs to the ERP.
What the storefront can usefully do is start the process. Let the customer pick the order and the lines, state a reason, and receive an authorization number and a label. The approval, the credit note and the disposition of the returned goods stay in the ERP, which already holds the rules.
Few commerce platforms model this natively for B2B. The common outcomes are a form that emails customer service, a returns app aimed at consumer retail, or a light front end onto the ERP’s own RMA object. The third is the most work and the only one that keeps the two systems in agreement.
Why it decides a platform
Returns are the part of a customer relationship most likely to end it, and the part most often left out of a commerce scope. Deciding early that the ERP owns the RMA saves rebuilding the workflow later.
Also called: return merchandise authorization, return material authorization, returns authorization, return authorization, RMA number, returns process.
Last updated 2026-08-20.