1. Purpose
Carry out the decisions that inspection recorded, so returned units either come back into sellable stock in a known bin or leave the building with an audit trail behind them. Sets out which dispositions touch inventory, which do not, and the one case where a restock quietly moves nothing.
2. Scope
Covers executing dispositions on a return whose units have all been inspected, from the return's detail page. Receiving is covered in SWI-030 and inspection in SWI-031. Items sitting on hold cannot be executed from here and are covered in SWI-033.
3. Roles & Responsibilities
Warehouse team: physically places restocked units and confirms the bin matches what was captured.
Operations lead: decides between restocking to inventory and marking restocked, and owns the outcome when stock does not move.
Support: reads the return's history to establish whether a unit was restocked or only recorded as restocked.
4. When you need this
A return has been fully inspected and its units need processing.
A merchant says returned stock has not reappeared in their available quantity.
A unit was restocked to the wrong bin and the correction route is unclear.
Execute All Dispositions has run but the return still does not read Completed.
5. Key concept: executing is what moves stock, and only Restock moves any
What people assume | What actually happens |
|---|---|
Grading an item Restock at inspection puts it back into stock. | Inspection only records the decision. Nothing moves until the disposition is executed, which is a separate deliberate step on the return. |
Every disposition does something to inventory. | Only Restock does. Refurbish, Liquidate, Donate, Recycle and Dispose write an audit record and change no stock at all. Those units were never added to inventory, so there is nothing to take away. |
Dispositions can be executed unit by unit as inspection goes along. | They cannot. Execution needs the return at Processing, which it reaches only once every unit on it has been inspected. One uninspected unit holds up the whole return. |
Restock to inventory always puts stock back. | It puts it back where a bin can be worked out. If no put-away location was captured at inspection and the SKU has no existing bin in that warehouse, nothing moves. The disposition still completes and the return's history says plainly that inventory was not moved. |
A restocked unit goes wherever it was picked from. | It goes to the put-away location captured at inspection. Without one it falls back to the bin already holding the most of that SKU in the warehouse, oldest bin breaking a tie. |
A disposition can be re-run if the wrong one was chosen. | It cannot. Once executed a unit is closed, and the correction is an inventory adjustment on the Inventory screen rather than a second execution. |
Execute All Dispositions processes everything on the return. | It skips anything on hold and anything already executed. A return can therefore finish the batch and still not be complete. |
6. Procedure — execute the dispositions on a return
Open Returns from the dashboard menu and open the return. It must read Processing or Partially Completed.
Read the Disposition Summary card. It shows how many units are waiting and what each has been given.
Check the Inspection Results card for anything on hold. Those units will not be processed here and need SWI-033 first.
Click Execute All Dispositions to process everything eligible, or click Execute on a single row to process one unit at a time.
If any Restock units are included, the Restock Inventory dialog asks what should happen to the inventory. Choose Restock to inventory to add the units back into sellable stock, or Mark restocked (no inventory change) where the team is placing them by hand. Add Put Away Task is not available yet.
Confirm. The choice made in that dialog applies to every Restock unit in the batch, not just the first.
Check the return's status. It moves to Completed when every unit has been executed, and to Partially Completed when some are still outstanding.
Confirm the restocked units are physically in the bin the system recorded, and place any that were marked restocked without an inventory change.
6A. What each disposition actually does
Disposition | Effect on inventory | What it records |
|---|---|---|
Restock | Adds one unit to a bin, subject to section 6B | An inventory log entry, a stock receipt against the return, and the bin, lot and expiry it went to |
Refurbish | None | An audit entry only |
Liquidate | None | An audit entry only |
Donate | None | An audit entry only |
Recycle | None | An audit entry only |
Dispose | None | An audit entry only |
Hold | None, and cannot be executed here | Nothing until it is resolved, which is SWI-033 |
The five middle codes differ from each other only in what the audit trail says. None of them removes stock, because a returned unit is never added to stock until Restock puts it there.
6B. Where a restocked unit lands, and when it lands nowhere
Restock to inventory takes one of two routes, decided by whether a put-away location was captured during inspection.
Where a location was captured, the unit goes into exactly that bin, carrying the lot number and expiry recorded with it. The system matches on the full combination of bin, lot and expiry, so a unit joins an existing matching row rather than creating a duplicate.
Where no location was captured, the unit falls back to a bin the system picks for that SKU in that warehouse: the one already holding the most of it, with the oldest bin winning a tie. Any lot or expiry captured at inspection is deliberately not applied on this route, because the chosen bin carries its own.
Where no location was captured and the SKU has no bin at all in that warehouse, the unit lands nowhere. This is the case worth knowing about. The disposition is still marked executed and the return still progresses, but no stock moves and the return's history records that inventory was not moved. It usually bites on a SKU that has sold out completely, or on a first return of a product that has never been received into that warehouse. Capturing a put-away location at inspection avoids it entirely.
7. Verification
The Disposition Summary on the return shows every unit executed.
The return reads Completed, or Partially Completed with the outstanding units visible.
Restocked units appear on the Inventory screen in the bin recorded against them, with the right lot and expiry.
The return's stock receipts list each restocked unit with the bin it went to, and that record survives the bin later being moved or archived.
The return's history names each disposition. For a restock that moved nothing, it says so in as many words rather than claiming a restock.
Available quantity for the SKU has risen by the number of units genuinely restocked, allowing a short delay for the recalculation.
8. Constraints and caveats
Full access to Orders governs executing a disposition. There is no separate returns permission.
The return must read Processing or Partially Completed. Everything else is refused, and Processing is only reached once every unit has been inspected.
A unit must have been inspected before its disposition can be executed.
Each disposition executes once. There is no undo, no re-run, and no reversal, so an error is corrected by adjusting inventory rather than by revisiting the return.
Hold units cannot be executed here at all. Execute All skips them silently, and executing one directly is refused.
Restock adds exactly one unit per inspected unit. Quantities are tracked per unit throughout, not per line.
The choice in the Restock Inventory dialog applies to every Restock unit in the batch. Where units need different treatment, execute them individually.
Mark restocked completes the disposition and changes nothing in inventory. Stock placed this way is invisible to the system until somebody adds it on the Inventory screen.
The warehouse a unit restocks into comes from the return itself, not from wherever the operator happens to be working.
A disposition fee is charged per unit where one is configured, and it can be set to differ by disposition code and by grade, with the more specific setting winning.
A return that finishes its batch with hold units still outstanding sits at Partially Completed until those are resolved. That is correct rather than stuck.
9. Worked example
A brand onboarding through a 3PL reported that a returned SKU had been processed but its available quantity had not moved.
What was observed | What it meant |
|---|---|
The return read Completed and the unit showed Restock, executed. | The disposition had run. The paperwork was finished, so the question was about stock rather than about the return. |
The return's history recorded that no inventory location was available and inventory was not moved. | The answer was already written down. The system had said plainly that it could not place the unit. |
The SKU held zero stock in that warehouse and had no bin there. | This was the cause. With nothing to fall back to, there was no bin the unit could join. |
No put-away location had been captured at inspection. | This was the avoidable part. A location captured during inspection would have placed the unit precisely and the fallback would never have been reached. |
Other SKUs on the same return had restocked normally. | They each had existing bins, so the fallback found them a home. The failure was specific to the sold-out SKU. |
The unit was added to a bin on the Inventory screen by hand, and the 3PL made capturing a put-away location a required step at inspection so the fallback stopped being load-bearing.