Ecommerce Operations Glossary
Definitions for key terms in Shopify and ecommerce operations — from refund workflows and chargeback evidence to fulfillment exceptions and operations SLAs.
Related: Post-Order Failures, Playbooks, Templates
Refund Approval Workflow
A structured decision process for evaluating, routing, and resolving refund requests consistently across an ecommerce team.
Chargeback Evidence
The documentation a merchant compiles and submits to a payment processor to contest a customer-initiated payment dispute.
Fulfillment Exception
Any deviation from expected order processing that requires manual intervention — including address failures, carrier exceptions, pick errors, and warehouse holds.
Return Fraud
Deliberate abuse of a retailer's returns or refund process through deception, including empty-box returns, item substitution, and repeat false claims.
Order Issue Triage
The systematic process of classifying, prioritizing, and routing post-order problems to the correct resolution path before time or value is lost.
Operations SLA
A formal performance commitment defining how quickly and reliably an operational process must be completed — such as refund processing time, fulfillment SLA, or support response time.
Staff Task Workflow
The structured system that defines how operations tasks are assigned to team members, tracked to completion, and reported — preventing dropped work at scale.