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B2B returns: what was agreed and what arrived?
Short answer
A shared B2B returns view sets the agreed items beside what the warehouse actually received, so customer service asks about a specific difference and does not have to call for details. First check whether your current system supports partial receipt and whether customer service can see the warehouse record. At Syntalith the application costs from €3,000 net. At 300 returns a month of 20 minutes each, it pays back in 1.0 month.
How we workDetails ↓
- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- net per application, fixed price before contract
- from €3,000
- from signing the contract to acceptance
- 4–10 weeks
- free prototype on your documents
- €0
We belong to the OpenAI and Anthropic partner programmes and learn through their official courses. What this means ↓
Author: Syntalith · 3 min read
Statistics
B2B trade and returns: statistics 2026
1.0 mo.
payback of a €3,000 application at 300 returns a month: €3,490 of work today, €526 with checking and the model. Scenario.
55.0%
According to Eurostat (2025), 55.0% of large EU enterprises with 250 or more employees used AI.
20.0%
According to Eurostat (2025), 20.0% of EU enterprises with at least 10 employees used AI.
50%
According to the European Commission (2026), half of EU SMEs and mid-caps name high investment costs as a barrier to AI.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer 578 (2026) ↗
47%
According to the European Commission (2026), customer service is the most common use of AI among EU SMEs and mid-caps that already use it, at 47%.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer 578 (2026) ↗
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
Six units in the parcel, four that match the agreement
A wholesaler agreed with a customer on the return of six adapters with a specific code. The warehouse worker finds four such adapters in the parcel and two units of a different product. The total number of units matches, but the contents do not. The warehouse worker records what actually arrived: four adapters against the agreed line, two missing units and two other products to clarify separately.
In the proposed view, a customer service employee opens the agreement and the warehouse record side by side, and if the company shares photos from receipt, they see the attachment too. They have a basis for a specific question: the parcel held four of the agreed adapters and two other products. The customer's answer stays with the same return, and the original agreement is not overwritten when the parties change it.
- 01Agreementlines and quantities agreed with the customer
- 02Receiptthe warehouse records the actual contents of the parcel
- 03Differencemissing units and other products shown separately
- 04Questioncustomer service asks the customer about the specific difference
- 05Decisionnext steps as agreed with the customer
- Open returns with their agreed lines
- Receipt records with their differences, because a bare „six units received” loses the gaps
- The correspondence and the questions to the customer
- Earlier agreements, when they change
What it costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 300 returns × 20 min = 100 h (€3,490)
- With the system, a person checks the output in 15% of the time
- €524
- Model, 1 call per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €2
- Cost of one case
- €11.63 today, €1.75 with the system
- Saving
- €2,964 a month
Payback of €3,000
1.0 month
The volume, the time and the checking share are the scenario's assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat. Model: 2,000 input tokens and 300 output tokens per call at Anthropic's rates, at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
The count covers the work around a case: searching, reading, writing and handing over. What remains is the time to check the result, 15% of today's work in the scenario. Before the quote, we measure both times on 20 to 100 cases the team has already handled, in a free test that takes 5 working days.
The model is an extra here: it helps match the customer's description from an email to a line in the agreement. Most of the saving comes from one case number running from the agreement to the receipt.
Your current system may already handle partial receipt
Sales and warehouse systems often support return orders linked to sales lines, partial receipts and splitting lines. Work out with the administrator where customer service will see the actual quantities and differences the warehouse recorded: if the data is available, configuring a view or switching on a module is enough. An integration helps when each system handles its own part well, but data is not passed between the request portal, the agreement and the receipt. Your own view is justified when, despite the modules, customer service still retypes agreements and asks the warehouse for separate explanations.
The system supports partial receipts
a view configured for customer service
no build
Portal, agreement and receipt in different systems
an integration with one case number
from €3,000
Customer service still retypes and asks the warehouse
a shared returns view, one warehouse to start
€3,000–€7,000
Where to start
The first scope can be limited to one warehouse and the recurring differences in parcel contents. After launch, someone has to react when the warehouse records a receipt that customer service cannot see. The wider scope for wholesalers is described in AI in wholesale. We build this kind of rollout as part of AI applications. For the free analysis, a description of one case from recent weeks and of the tools it passed through is enough. You do not need to send confidential documents, and you get a written plan within 2 working days.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: returns in a wholesale business
We run the same count for your returns in the free analysis.
€5,584
a month for retyping 1,200 orders by hand
Payback: 0.6 mo.
8 minutes to retype an order and checking in 15% of the old time are our assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. Model cost: reading the order in our system (about €0.0006) plus matching the lines (Claude Sonnet 5.5, about 3,000 + 500 tokens), at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
See the full calculation →
