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Return Orders and Return Order Line Items
Track and manage the end-of-life and reclamation journeys for your internal hardware inventory from a centralized app. Return orders give your IT department real-time visibility into incoming devices, automate quantity rollups at target stockrooms, and maintain an accurate audit trail of asset state changes.
Required Editions
| Available in: Lightning Experience |
| Available in: Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions with Agentforce IT Service. |
Purpose and Business Value
By using return orders and return order line items streamlines asset reclamation and asset refresh lifecycles. This structured approach provides greater operational flexibility than standard stockroom product transfers because it focuses explicitly on hardware items returned by your users.
Key workflows provide these operational benefits.
- Flexible Routing: Route different devices from a single service request to various targeted stockrooms or disposal vendors simultaneously.
- Inventory Accuracy: Automatically update state-based quantity fields at destination locations upon receiving a device.
- Audit Trail Tracking: Log a continuous chronological record of every state transition in the centralized asset timeline.
Core Data Model
The asset return system organizes records in a parent-child structure to manage overarching pickup logistics alongside individual serialized assets.
- Return Order: Tracks the top-level request to collect hardware items and route them to a single destination workspace. This record links directly to the parent service request.
- Return Order Line Item: Represents a specific physical piece of hardware tied to the return. Each line item links to an individual asset record and its corresponding product item record.
Location-Based Destination Routing
When inventory managers plan a reclamation workflow, the destination selected for each device determines how records generate.
- Single Return Order: The system creates one return order record if all assets in a request go to the same stockroom site.
- Multiple Return Orders: The system creates separate return order records if assets go to different stockrooms. For example, you can route a laptop to a central depot and a mobile phone to a local stockroom.
Asset Status Progression
As a return order moves through its operational lifecycle stages, background automation updates the status on the linked asset record.
| Lifecycle Phase | Asset Status | System Action |
|---|---|---|
| Initiation | Pending Reclaim | Updates the asset status upon adding a line item to a draft return order. |
| Shipping | In Transit | Updates the asset status when a user transitions the return order to a sent state. |
| Receiving | Reclaimed | Updates the asset status when an inventory manager marks the order as received. |
Auditability and Asset Activity
Centralized transactional tracking records every significant event in the return lifecycle directly to the asset timeline. This automated process maintains an immutable audit trail capturing these specific data points.
- Transaction Type: Logs events such as adding an asset to a return order line item.
- Field Updates: Captures historical values and current values for tracking state drift.
- User Information: Records the ID of the modifying user and an explicit timestamp of the change.
Asset State Reversion
When a user cancels a return order or an associated service request before completion, the reversion logic safeguards inventory data integrity. The system automatically reverts linked hardware assets to their most recent valid status, such as changing from Pending Reclaim back to Assigned. This automated cleanup keeps inventory counts synchronized without manual administrative intervention.
