A Brief Guide on Order Refund API – Your Bigcommerce Refunds Made Easier

2020 has brought in many innovative plugins and APIs making business for eCommerce stores hassle free and easier. Off late, the open source BigCommerce community has launched an ORDER REFUND API, which is available for the public without any surge charge. The best part of the Automate Refund API is that it allows BigCommerce developers to build applications that can easily process refunds without the manual interference against the orders and it can also be beneficial in BigCommerce stencil development. The positive aspect is that, this in big time not only saves merchants time but also reduces errors while processing refunds. These endpoints empower Bigcommerce stencil developer and agencies to build features that are embedded with refund functionality directly into their applications. Merchants no longer have to process the refunds manually via BigCommerce control panel as the API does all the stuff. 

Major Benefits Developers Gain

Utilizing the Order Refund API, developers can

• Submit refunds using an order management system or ERP
• Export the complete list of all past refunds to the external systems
• Expand the functionality of refunds-related third-party solutions (e.g. returns solutions)

Recently launched ORDER REFUND API is specially prepared and developed for merchants and BigCommerce developers empowering them with the potential to process refunds pro grammatically and conveniently. 

Order Refund API End Points

Consisting of four endpoints, order refund api is generated to resolve next gen refund challenges. The first two endpoints help to unwieldy the refunds for a single order. The other endpoints unlock the capability of the application to generate the list of past refunds. Converting to Bigcommere stencil, order refund API can also be implemented. 

What Types of Refunds are Supported?

The Order Refund API supports two types of refund:

• Line Item Refunds
• Order Level Refunds 

Line Item Refunds

This line item refunds help applications to request refunds for specific quantities of items in a single order. As the number of items to be refunded can be less than the total number of items in the order, it is plausible to submit several line-item refunds for a single order. 

Furthermore, whenever a line item refund is processed, the applied tax is calculated again to make sure the latest tax rates are used for the refund. 

Order Level Refunds

Order-level refunds help applications to refund a subjective amount from the total amount of the order refundable. 

This type of refund is especially helpful when the refund to be made for items by whole quantities is insufficient. For example, you can make use of an order-level refund when you have to process a refund to the value of an item minus any return shipping or cleaning costs.

In this scenario, tax is not applicable as it is not re-calculated during the refund quote as the refund to be processed is against the total refundable order amount, not any one particular line item.

What are the Major Supported Refund Methods?

In order to provide refunds, the Order Refund API aids the following three refund methods.

Refunds Via Supported Payment Providers

For passing a refund request, BigCommerce forwards it to the corresponding payment provider for processing, and this is issued if Provider_id in the refund request payload matches a provider_id returned in the refund quote. Normally, this can be infused during BigCommerce shopping cart development. 

Refund to BigCommerce Store Credit

When “store credit” is assigned as the provider_id, then eventually, BigCommerce will take care of this applying a BigCommerce store-credit for the amount specified against the account of the customer that is linked with the order.

Offline Refunds

This is one of the common processes that usually occur in any ecommerce business. When the payments are collected outside BigCommerce, they are marked as offline when developing a refund via the Order Refund API. This ensures that the order data which is store in BigCommerce store is up-to-date with the refunds that have been performed externally.

How Refunds Work

For issuing a refund on an order includes two post requests. 

1. It is to calculate amounts and avail available payment methods. 
2. To create a refund.

Thus, before issuing a refund of the order, a refund quote is created initially. Then, it will be processed further by creating a refund using the information from the quote.

It has to be noticed that if you have to process multiple refunds for the same order, the refunds need to occur in sequential order. In brief, start by creating a quote for the refund, then quote refund for the first refund before moving on to perform the same actions for the second refund.. 

What is a refund quote?

To decode in layman’s language, it is a quote that provides the tax amount, refund amount, and an array of available payment methods for order refunds.

Thus, during Bigcommerce shopping cart development, infusing order refund API brings in better results. 

In a Nutshell,

 BigCommerce community and Bigcommerce store development services continuously strive to provide merchants with potential and effective solutions that not only save time, reduce errors but also ease the procedure and maximize convenience.

Thus, when it is all about processing refunds, the Order Refund API is the best parameter that is precisely aligned with these goals. With refunds being the major part of BigCommerce stores, this API comes as the perfect fit. And, with the whole gamut of benefits, BigCommerce stencil developers now have advanced tools to incorporate these new API into the solutions they develop for merchants. Additionally, BigCommerce stencil development helps store owners with these features to be seamlessly incorporated to reap the quick results. 

And, if you are not sure how to work on this whole procedure, hire Bigcommerce Development Company that handles the whole stress. Offering a hoard of BigCommerce stencil development services, we constantly evolve with the storefront features leveraging the best of Bigcommerce features.