The Scenario
You are a customer service manager. Every Friday at 3 PM you run a returns reconciliation for the weekly finance meeting. The finance director wants a spreadsheet showing every return processed in the last 30 days: return ID, original order ID, customer email, return reason, refund amount, and current status.
BaseLinker has all of it. But pulling it into a sheet manually means filtering returns in the UI, exporting a CSV with limited columns, and then manually cross-referencing the original order IDs for the customer emails that did not come through in the export.
The bad version:
- Open BaseLinker returns module, set the date filter to the last 30 days
- Export the CSV
- Open in Sheets, check the columns match what Finance expects
- The customer email column is missing — it is in the order record, not the return record
- Go back to BaseLinker, find each order ID, look up the email
- Forty minutes of reconciliation before you can walk into the meeting. You are still copying emails when the finance director pings asking if the sheet is ready.
The fast version is one prompt before lunch on Friday.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI reads BaseLinker's returns API directly and joins it with the order data in one operation, so you get the complete picture in one pass.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Fetch all BaseLinker order returns from the last 30 days and write return ID, original order ID, customer email, return reason, refund amount, and status into this sheet. One row per return, sorted by return date descending.
SheetXAI calls the BaseLinker returns API, fetches the linked order data for each return to get the customer email, and writes the complete table. The finance director gets the sheet they expect, with every column populated.
What You Get
A complete returns log with every field Finance needs:
- Return ID — the BaseLinker return record identifier
- Original order ID — cross-reference to the order
- Customer email — pulled from the linked order record
- Return reason — what the customer cited
- Refund amount — what was issued
- Status — pending, completed, rejected, etc.
The sheet is the finance handoff. The director does not need BaseLinker access. They filter by status to see pending refunds, sort by refund amount to see the biggest exposures, and sign off.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Returns data needs shaping before it is meeting-ready. SheetXAI handles the filtering and analysis in the same prompt.
When you only want returns in specific statuses
Finance only cares about pending and in-process returns for the approval meeting.
Pull all BaseLinker returns where status is in cells A2:A5 of this sheet. Write return ID, order ID, customer email, return reason, refund value, and status into a table starting at B2.
When you need to group returns by reason for the trend analysis
The customer service director wants to see which return reasons are driving the most volume this month.
Fetch all BaseLinker order returns from the last 30 days. Write the full returns table into this sheet starting at row 2. Then, in a separate tab called "By Reason," create a summary table showing each return reason, the count of returns for that reason, and the total refund amount for that reason, sorted by count descending.
When some returns have been refunded in the wrong amount
You need to flag returns where the refund amount does not match the original order value.
Fetch all BaseLinker returns from the last 30 days. For each return, also fetch the original order's total value. Write return ID, original order ID, order value, refund amount, and return reason into this sheet. In column F, flag any return where the refund amount is more than 5% higher than the original order value with "OVERPAYMENT REVIEW."
When you need to pull returns, calculate the return rate, identify the top products returned, and generate the weekly summary in one pass
The finance director wants more than a list. They want the analysis.
Fetch all BaseLinker returns from the last 30 days and write the complete returns table into this sheet starting at row 2. Then calculate the total number of returns, total refund value, and average refund value and write them into cells A1:C1 as a header summary. In a separate tab called "Top Products," list the top 10 products by return count, with product ID, SKU, return count, and total refund value for each.
The pattern: the raw returns data, the summary stats, and the product-level analysis come from one prompt. You walk into the Friday meeting with the full picture.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open a blank sheet, then ask it to pull the BaseLinker returns data. The BaseLinker integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related workflows, see how to bulk-issue invoices from a sheet or the BaseLinker in Google Sheets overview.