RECORDREFERENCE OUTLINE

Wholesale Returns Assessment Record

Assessment record for the one routine transaction where product re-enters saleable stock from outside your control. Quarantine on receipt, positive evidence of storage conditions rather than the absence of a complaint, origin and entitlement checks, packaging and safety-feature inspection, a responsible-person decision against defined criteria, and returns analysed as data. Maps to EU GDP 2013/C 343/01 and WHO TRS 957 Annex 5.

What a template is not

A template is a document baseline to adapt inside your own quality system. SPEQ does not approve, validate, or take responsibility for what you issue from it, and using one is not evidence of compliance.

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REGULATIONS MAPPED
2013/C 343/01WHO TRS 957, Annex 5
DOCUMENT TYPE
Record
LAST UPDATED
August 2026
PURPOSE

A return is the one routine transaction where product re-enters saleable stock from outside your control, which makes it the natural entry point for falsified, mishandled and diverted medicines. The default answer is no, and the record exists to document what changed that answer. The failure mode is a return placed into pickable stock while the assessment is pending — the control is then decorative.

What's Inside

Receipt details and immediate physical quarantine, recorded as a location rather than as a status flag
Storage condition evidence with its source named — who held it, at what temperature, on whose record
Origin and entitlement checks reconciled against the original outbound record, not against the customer’s claim
Packaging and safety feature inspection, listing the specific features checked rather than summarising them as intact
Time spent outside your control, because duration and conditions together decide the outcome
Responsible person decision against defined criteria, with the reason recorded for a return to saleable stock
Returns analysed as a dataset — by customer, product and reason — so a pattern surfaces

How to Use It

1Quarantine physically on receipt; placing returns into pickable stock pending assessment defeats the control before it has operated at all
2Require positive evidence of storage conditions — the absence of a reported problem is not a record of conditions
3Reconcile origin against your own outbound record; entitlement confirmed from the returning party’s paperwork confirms only their paperwork
4Treat intact packaging as necessary but not sufficient; inspect the specific safety features and record which ones you examined
5Keep the saleable-return decision with the responsible person, against written criteria, rather than with the warehouse floor under despatch pressure
6Review the returns dataset periodically — one customer returning repeatedly is a supply-chain signal, not a warehouse task
DOCUMENT CONTENTS

The full section structure of this template — every section and sub-section, so you can use it as a baseline for your own site document.

Document Control
Document InformationApproval SignaturesRevision HistoryDistribution List
1Receipt and Immediate Quarantine
2Storage Condition Evidence
3Origin and Entitlement
4Physical and Safety Feature Inspection
5Responsible Person Decision
6Returns as Data
REGULATORY CONTEXT

The EU GDP Guidelines 2013/C 343/01 set the conditions under which returned medicinal products may go back into saleable stock, and place the decision with the responsible person; WHO TRS 957 Annex 5 carries the equivalent good storage and distribution expectations. Neither writes your criteria for you — the temperature evidence you will accept, the time out of control you treat as disqualifying, the features you inspect. Those are your determinations. The record structure here is SPEQ practitioner synthesis built to make each one explicit.

MAPPED STANDARDS
2013/C 343/01WHO TRS 957, Annex 5
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