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Reverse Logistics

Quality Check

Quality Check (QC) lets you define inspection criteria for returned items. When QC is enabled, the rider verifies the item against your rules at the customer's doorstep before accepting the return. This prevents damaged, wrong, or incomplete items from entering the return pipeline.

How It Works

The rider inspects the item at the customer's location before picking it up. The rider app presents your QC questions one by one — the rider records answers, and the system evaluates them against your expected values.

• Pass: All mandatory checks match. Item is picked up normally.
• Fail: One or more mandatory checks don't match. Depending on your configuration:
  • Reject on fail (default): Item is not picked up. Order moves to QC Failed status. Failure photos and remarks are captured.
  • Partial pickup: Item is still picked up but marked as fail. You receive the QC results via tracking and webhooks to decide next steps.

Defining QC Rules

You define QC rules per SKU when placing an order using the qc_rules array inside sku_details:

Code
{
  "sku_details": [
    {
      "sku_name": "ROAV Low-Tops Sports Shoes",
      "qc_required": true,
      "brand": "NEW BALANCE",
      "qc_rules": [
        {
          "question": "Does the Brand name match?",
          "is_mandatory": true,
          "value": "NEW BALANCE"
        },
        {
          "question": "Is the Tag attached?",
          "is_mandatory": true,
          "value": "Yes"
        },
        {
          "question": "Any visible damage?",
          "is_mandatory": false,
          "value": "No"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Field	Required	Description
question	Yes	The inspection question shown to the rider
is_mandatory	Yes	If true, a mismatch on this question fails the entire QC
value	No	The expected answer. If provided, the rider's response is compared against this

Key behaviors:

• qc_required defaults to true. A SKU with no qc_required field is a SKU with QC on.
• If qc_required is true but no qc_rules are provided, Shadowfax falls back to your client-level default rules (configured during onboarding).
• If qc_required is false, QC is skipped entirely for that SKU.
• Rules are evaluated in the order they appear in the array.

Checking QC Results

In Tracking Response

The tracking API returns QC results per SKU:

Code
{
  "skus": [
    {
      "client_sku_id": "469224748005",
      "name": "ROAV Low-Tops Sports Shoes",
      "qc_status": "passed",
      "qc_remarks": ""
    }
  ]
}

qc_status	Meaning
passed	Item passed all mandatory QC checks
fail	Item failed QC

qc_remarks contains the reason when QC fails (e.g. "Product damaged", "Brand mismatch").

In Webhooks

When QC fails, the webhook payload includes qc_images — photos captured by the rider showing the issue:

Code
{
  "awb_number": "R842568718MEE",
  "status": "QC Failed",
  "qc_images": [
    "https://storage.shadowfax.in/qc/img1.jpg",
    "https://storage.shadowfax.in/qc/img2.jpg"
  ]
}