Counted as a refund
A refund gets the stock back; a dispute does not. Treating the two the same understates chargebacks by the entire cost of the goods, which on most catalogues is the largest single part of the loss.
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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
€129,23
Lost
€178,18
money, goods, parcel, fee, time
Won
€38,33
fee and time anyway
25Orders to cover a month
17,4
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, gross−€101,15
17Goods, not coming back€32,30
21Outbound fulfilment€6,40
23Dispute fee€15,00
31Your time€23,33
Per month, expected−€775,381,3%
A chargeback is not a return: the goods almost never come back, so you lose the money and the stock. That asymmetry is why prevention, clear billing descriptors, reachable support and honest delivery dates, is worth far more per euro than winning cases after the fact.
€178,18 when it is lost and €38,33 when it is won, weighted by your 35,0% win rate. At 6 a month that is €9.304,56 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, the goods that do not come back, the outbound shipping, the dispute fee charged whether you win or lose, and the time spent on evidence, weighted by your own win rate.
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 gross, 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, a €15 dispute fee, goods at 38% of the net value, €6,40 of outbound fulfilment, 40 minutes of evidence at €35 an hour, and a 35% win rate over six disputes a month.
Lost, the case costs €178,18. Won, it still costs €38,33. At a 35% win rate the expected cost of one dispute is €129,23.
Six disputes a month is €775,38, which is €9.305 a year, or about 17 healthy orders every month spent replacing money that already arrived once. On €60.000 of monthly net revenue that is 1,3% of the business.
Note the asymmetry the arithmetic exposes: the disputed order itself is barely half the cost. The rest is stock, shipping, fees and time, which is why preventing one dispute is worth more than winning two.
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?
Far more than the order. A lost dispute takes the money back gross, the goods stay with the customer, the parcel was shipped, the gateway charges its dispute fee anyway and somebody spent half an hour on evidence. On a €101 order that is well over €200 once the stock 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; a chargeback almost never does, so you lose the money and the inventory at once. That is also why nouz books a chargeback as a return on the statement, once Shopify records it as a refund.
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+2Payment fee calculator
What every gateway takes 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 treats a disputed amount as a return and the dispute fee as a transaction cost, on the days each one landed, so a bad month for chargebacks explains itself rather than merely feeling wrong.
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