Use this article to understand what has to connect to Ingrid Care and what you have to decide during Ingrid Care integration.
This article is for merchants in phase 3 of an Ingrid Care implementation, especially technical leads and the owners of warehouse systems. Integration is phase 3 of your Ingrid Care implementation. You lead Ingrid Care integration — Ingrid guides with documentation and the Ingrid integrations team.
This article explains what has to connect to Ingrid Care and what you have to decide. The per-platform configuration guides linked below carry the step-by-step detail, and your developers will want developer.ingrid.com for the API (application programming interface) reference.
Ingrid Care connects in two places
Unlike the other Ingrid products, Ingrid Care needs data at two different points in the return lifecycle — and the second one is optional depending on the choice you made during scoping.
1. Order data for Ingrid Care, from your e-commerce platform
Ingrid Care needs to know what a shopper bought before they can return it. This connection is always required.
See E-commerce platform integration, then the guide for your platform:
Brink and Brink Retail
Custom platform, if you are not on one of the above
2. Returned-item events for Ingrid Care — or Quality check instead
Ingrid Care needs to know what happened to the returned item. Whether the item's arrival is what triggers the refund or exchange is configurable in Ingrid Care, so that timing is a policy decision rather than fixed behavior. There are two routes for getting the information to Ingrid Care, decided during scoping.
Route A: your warehouse systems send the events to Ingrid Care. This is integration work. See WMS (warehouse management system) integration, then the guide for your system:
Route B: your warehouse staff work in Ingrid Care. Ingrid Care Quality check gives them an inspection workflow inside Ingrid, so the resolution is triggered from there rather than from your systems. This route replaces integration work with configuration and training.
Route B is worth considering seriously if your warehouse cannot prioritize integration work in your timeline — it removes a dependency you do not control.
Ingrid Care integration if you also use Ingrid Transport
Ingrid Care return shipments can be booked through Ingrid Transport, which links warehouse notifications to return creation. See the Ingrid Transport configuration guide.
Who you need for Ingrid Care integration
Your technical lead owns the platform connection to Ingrid Care. If you are taking route A, the owner of your WMS or ERP (enterprise resource planning) system needs to be available from the start — not consulted once the date is at risk. If you are taking route B, you need warehouse staff available for Ingrid Care training instead, which is usually easier to arrange.
What you do during Ingrid Care integration
Connect your e-commerce platform so order data reaches Ingrid Care.
Either integrate returned-item events, or configure and train on Quality check.
Run a first return end to end before go-live, from Returns Portal registration through to resolution. Ingrid Care has no staging environment, so this runs in your Ingrid production environment — in whichever shop you agreed to test in during scoping. See Care: configuration.