80% faster refund processing and 15 hours saved weekly for TSB Living

TSB Living is one of New Zealand's largest online furniture and homewares retailers, processing thousands of orders a week across multiple marketplaces and its own Shopify store. Its refunds and returns operation ran out of a shared Excel spreadsheet, with the customer service team copying order numbers, refund amounts, reasons, and approval status between tabs by hand.

As order volume grew, the team needed a single source of truth: safe simultaneous editing, a clear audit trail of who approved what, and reliable reporting on return rates by product and supplier. The goal was a purpose-built system that could keep pace with that volume and keep finance, customer service, and management working from the same data.

Built a multi-user web application on a Node. js and PostgreSQL stack with a normalised relational schema covering orders, refund requests, approvals, and supplier chargebacks.

Pulled order data directly from Shopify via the Admin API so the team never re-keyed details across systems. Routed each refund request through a configurable approval workflow with role-based permissions, then triggered the Shopify refund via API once approved.

Added automated customer email notifications at each stage and a full audit log of every action. Surfaced return rates by SKU and supplier in a reporting dashboard for management.