Free browser-based calculator
What does handling Shopify returns through email cost?
Estimate the staff time and direct labor cost spent reading, checking, answering, and tracking return or exchange requests by hand. Your inputs stay in this browser and are not sent to Opus.
Calculate your manual return workload
- Requests each month
- 40
- Staff hours each month
- 8.0
- Labor cost each month
- $200
- Staff hours each year
- 96
- Labor cost each year
- $2,400
How the estimate works
Monthly requests equal monthly orders multiplied by the request rate. Staff hours equal requests multiplied by minutes per request, divided by 60. Labor cost equals those hours multiplied by the fully loaded hourly cost you entered.
Use your own order history and support timing when available. The default values are examples, not industry benchmarks.
Measure the time before changing tools
- Count return and exchange requests for one normal month.
- Time a sample from the first message through final logging.
- Include repeated customer emails and order lookups.
- Use the actual loaded cost of the people doing the work.
- Recalculate after changing the workflow.
Remove the shared-inbox step
Give customers one structured request portal.
Opus is free and gives small Shopify teams one place to collect, review, and resolve returns and exchanges. Test it with an order before adding the portal to your storefront.
Install Opus free from Shopify