Counted as a refund
A refund gets the stock back and its cost credited; a dispute does neither. Treating the two the same credits goods that never come back, and understates every chargeback by their entire cost.
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Chargeback cost calculator
What a disputed order costs when it is lost, what it still costs when it is won, and what the two together take out of a month at your own win rate.
Expected cost of one dispute
€93,58
Lost
€123,33
money without VAT, fee, time
Won
€38,33
fee and time anyway
25Orders to cover a month
12,6
at your contribution
One disputed order
Fighting it, and how often it happens
Evidence takes real time, and the time is spent whether or not you win.
↑ ↓ to nudge, Shift for ten. Commas or dots both work.
One dispute
10Disputed amount, without VAT. Returns take back €101,15, and its €16,15 of VAT comes back on line 12.−€85,00
23Dispute fee€15,00
31Your time€23,33
Per month, expected−€561,480,9%
A chargeback is not a return: the goods almost never come back, so their cost stays on the statement with the sale and nothing is credited. The lost case is the money without its VAT, the fee and the time, and a won case still costs the fee and the time. That is why prevention, clear billing descriptors, reachable support and honest delivery dates, is worth far more per euro than winning cases after the fact.
€123,33 when it is lost and €38,33 when it is won, weighted by your 35,0% win rate. At 6 a month that is €6.737,76 a year.
Track disputes on the statement
An estimate from flat rates. In nouz every order is priced from the costs of its own day.
What this calculator does
What it does
A chargeback cost calculator prices a disputed order properly: the money returned, less the VAT that comes back, the dispute fee charged whether you win or lose, and the time spent on evidence, weighted by your own win rate. The goods and the parcel stay costs of the sale, so they are never counted twice.
The formula
A return brings the goods back. A chargeback does not.
That single difference is why disputes are so much more expensive than refunds. The money goes back, less the VAT the tax office returns, the customer keeps the product, the parcel was already paid for, the gateway charges its dispute fee whichever way the case goes, and somebody spends half an hour assembling evidence.
Winning helps less than it feels like it should. A won case still costs the fee and the time, so a store with a healthy win rate is still paying a real monthly amount for the privilege of defending itself.
Which is the argument for prevention over litigation. An unrecognisable billing descriptor, a delivery that arrived late, support nobody could reach: those produce more disputes than fraud does in most stores, and all three are cheaper to fix than to win.
Where it goes wrong
Four reasons disputes cost more than the order was worth.
Chargebacks are rare enough to feel like noise and expensive enough to deserve a line.
The fee forgotten on won cases
Winning does not refund the dispute fee or the hour spent proving delivery. A store that wins two thirds of its cases and thinks those cost nothing is understating its dispute bill by exactly that share.
Time treated as free
Evidence gathering is somebody’s afternoon: order records, tracking, delivery confirmation, correspondence, submitted before a deadline. Priced at a real hourly cost it frequently exceeds the dispute fee itself.
The ratio ignored until it is a problem
Beyond a threshold, card schemes put merchants into monitoring programmes with penalties and, eventually, processing risk. That is a business continuity issue rather than a cost line, and it arrives long after the pattern that caused it started.
Worked example
A €101,15 dispute, both ways
The calculator’s defaults: a €101,15 gross order at 19% VAT, a €15 dispute fee, 40 minutes of evidence at €35 an hour, and a 35% win rate over six disputes a month. The goods and the parcel were costs of the sale and stay there, so they are not counted again.
Lost, the case costs €123,33. Won, it still costs €38,33. At a 35% win rate the expected cost of one dispute is €93,58.
Six disputes a month is €561,48, which is €6.738 a year, or about 13 healthy orders every month spent replacing money that already arrived once. On €60.000 of monthly net revenue that is 0,9% of the business.
Note what the arithmetic exposes: winning does not make a dispute free. A won case still costs €38,33, 31% of a lost one, in the fee and the time, which is why preventing a dispute beats winning it.
In the app
nouz works this out from every order, every day.
A calculator works from flat rates you type once. nouz prices every single order from the cost rules that were in force on that order's own date, and rebuilds the same statement every night from your own orders and your own ad spend.
- Every cost at the rate of its own day. Product costs, parcels and payment fees per order, so a price change never rewrites last month.
- Ad spend comes in by itself. Meta, Google and TikTok through their official APIs, plus anything you add by hand or by CSV.
- The same lines, per product. What is left after product costs, after shipping and payment fees, and after ads, for every product you sell.
How much does a chargeback cost?
More than the order. A lost dispute takes the money back, the gateway charges its dispute fee anyway and somebody spent 40 minutes on evidence. Only the VAT comes back, on the Taxes line, and the goods and the parcel stay where the sale put them, as costs already counted. On a €101 order a lost case costs €123 once the fee and the time are counted.
What does a chargeback cost when I win?
The dispute fee and the time, both of which are spent whichever way it goes. That is the fact that changes behaviour: even a store winning most of its cases is paying a real monthly amount for the privilege, and prevention is the only lever that removes the cost rather than recovering part of it.
Is a chargeback the same as a return?
No, and the difference is the goods. A return brings the stock back, usually saleable, and credits its cost; a chargeback almost never does, so the goods keep their cost while the money goes back. nouz counts a lost or accepted Shopify Payments dispute as a return on the day it closed, where the store has granted the disputes permission, and its dispute fee as a transaction cost where the store lets nouz read its Shopify Payments account.
How do I reduce chargebacks?
Most disputes come from confusion rather than fraud: an unrecognisable billing descriptor, a delivery that arrived late, support that could not be reached. Fixing those three is cheaper than winning cases, and unlike winning, it also keeps the customer.
Should I fight every dispute?
Compare the expected recovery with the time. A case worth €40 that takes an hour of a person's time to contest is not worth contesting on money alone, though a pattern of fraud can justify fighting on principle. Knowing your win rate turns that into arithmetic rather than instinct.
More calculators
Four that go with this one.
Each one is a different question about the same statement. All 32 are free, and none of them asks you to sign up.
All calculatorsReturn cost calculator
The margin handed back, the parcel already shipped, the fee kept, the bench, the markdown.L10ReturnsL19CM1L25CM2+2Shopify fees calculator
What Shopify Payments and every other gateway take in a month, blended into the one rate that reaches your P&L.L23Payment feesL25CM2+1Contribution margin calculator
Three margins instead of one, because the goods, the order and the customer are three different questions.L25CM2L29CM3L33EBITDA+7Break-even calculator
How many orders a month has to bring in before it covers what the month costs you.L25CM2L29CM3L33EBITDA+7
The terms this calculator uses
- ChargebackA payment reversed by the customer's bank, plus a fee.
- Transaction feesWhat the payment provider keeps from every charge.
- Returns and refundsWhat refunds take back, on the day they were issued.
- True cost of a returnThe refund plus everything the refund does not give back.
- CM2CM1 minus the cost of fulfilling the order and getting paid.
The long version
Want the long version rather than the arithmetic?
Won dispute€38,33still costs the fee and the time7 min readA chargeback and a return are not the same costBoth hand money back. Only one hands the goods back, and only one charges a fee whichever way it goes. Why a P&L has to treat them separately.A chargeback and a return are not the same costDisputes on the statement, where their cost is visible.
nouz counts a lost Shopify Payments dispute as a return on the day it closed, with its VAT handed back, so a bad month for chargebacks explains itself rather than merely feeling wrong.
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