What are refunds on OTTO?
Last updated: 31 October 2026 · The MargenOptimierer app is in German. Button and menu names are shown exactly as you see them, with the English meaning in brackets.
Refunds are the money your customers get back for a purchase, usually after a return.
OTTO pays it out to the customer and settles it with you. On the Marge (margin) page, your revenue stays in full, and the refund comes off as its own line on the day of the refund. Every refund includes VAT that you get back, and the Marge page shows that part in the Mehrwertsteuer (VAT) line.
Example: Refund for an acacia chair
Say a customer gets 119 € back for a returned acacia chair. Refunds then show 119 €, and that includes 19 € of VAT that you get back.
In the period, 6 acacia chairs came back, so the chair shows 714 € of refunds.
What else counts for refunds
Partial refund and OTTO commission
If the customer only gets part of the money back, exactly that part counts. After a return, OTTO gives you back the OTTO commission for it, and for a partial refund the matching part. On the Marge page, the OTTO commission goes down by that amount on the day of the refund.
If you refund a customer part of the price after a complaint and they keep the goods, OTTO keeps the OTTO commission and the payment fee in full. The Marge page calculates the same way. The amount appears under refunds, and you only get back the VAT in it.
Without a known item
If a refund can't be matched to an item, it appears with its VAT in the „Ohne Artikel“ (without item) row.
When no goods came back
If a customer gets money back even though no goods came back, for example because the parcel got lost, the refund still counts in the margin. This return doesn't count in the return rate.
Next
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