The real cost of a return nobody tracked properly

A return has at least four separate facts attached to it: the courier's claim that it was returned, whether the parcel is physically back in your warehouse, what condition it arrived in, and whether it ever actually gets restocked.

Most tracking tools collapse all four into a single "Returned" status, which means damaged stock gets counted as sellable, missing parcels never get flagged, and courier liability never gets pursued.

If your returns process has one status instead of four, you are almost certainly under-counting dead stock.