RTO Loss Calculator
RTO doesn't just mean a lost sale — it means you paid to ship an order out and paid again to ship it back, with nothing to show for it. See exactly what that's costing you each month, and how your rate compares to your category's benchmark.
₹29,498/ month
Double freight (shipped both ways)
₹20,520
Damaged/unsellable stock
₹8,978
171 of your 950 monthly orders (18%) come back as RTO.
For Fashion & Apparel, sellers typically report:
Midpoint of the cited 25-45% COD RTO range for fashion & apparel. Source: reliable secondary, verified 2026-10-04.
We don't charge your full product cost on RTO'd orders — the item comes back to your inventory and is usually resellable. The real RTO cost is double freight (you paid to ship it out and paid again to ship it back) plus a damage/resale-loss provision for stock that comes back unsellable.
A seller dispatching 1,000 orders a month at exactly a 10% RTO rate — a round number that's easy to sanity-check against your own numbers.
Inputs
- Dispatched orders
- 1000
- RTO rate
- 10%
- Product cost
- ₹400
- Forward + reverse shipping
- ₹120
Result
- RTO units
- 100
- Double freight cost
- ₹12,000
- Damage/resale-loss cost
- ₹6,000
- Total monthly RTO loss
- ₹18,000 / month
Does RTO loss include the full product cost of the returned item?
No — the item comes back to your inventory and is usually resellable, so charging full product cost would double-count a cost you haven't incurred. The real cost is double freight plus a damage/resale-loss provision for stock that comes back genuinely unsellable.
Why is COD RTO so much higher than prepaid RTO?
A COD customer hasn't paid yet, so there's no financial commitment backing the order — refusal at the door, address issues, or simple change of mind cost them nothing. Prepaid customers have already paid, which filters out a large share of that behavior.
What's a 'good' RTO rate?
It varies sharply by category — fashion/apparel COD RTO commonly runs 25-45%, while electronics is closer to 8-28%. Compare your rate against your own category's benchmark above, not a single national number.
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