Cash on Delivery for Ecommerce

COD is a switch on most platforms. It should be a dial.

Most store builders give you one toggle: COD on, or COD off. That is not a business decision, it is a coin flip.

Here COD is controlled at three levels. Per product — a high-value or fragile item can be prepaid-only while the rest of the catalogue stays COD. Per order value — you can allow COD below a threshold and require prepayment above it, because a refused ₹800 order stings and a refused ₹12,000 order hurts.

And store level, so you can switch the whole thing off during a festive rush when your courier is already struggling, then switch it back the following week.

A COD charge changes behaviour more than a discount does

Prepaid discounts are the usual advice, and they work — but they cost you margin on every single order, including the ones that would have been prepaid anyway.

A small COD handling charge does the opposite. It costs you nothing, and it shifts a meaningful share of buyers to prepaid simply because they can see a reason to. The ones who still choose COD are paying towards the risk they represent.

You set the charge yourself from the admin panel — a flat amount or nothing at all, changed as often as you like. Nobody needs to touch code to run an experiment.

Where COD orders actually go wrong

The order that never gets delivered is only half the loss. You also paid forward freight, return freight, and the packing cost of a product that came back looking less new than it left.

Most of those failures trace to the same handful of causes — an address that was never complete, a phone number nobody answers, or a buyer who ordered on impulse at midnight and had forgotten by morning.

Order confirmation is where you catch this. WhatsApp ordering and alerts send a confirmation to the number the buyer actually uses, which surfaces a wrong number immediately rather than three days later at the doorstep. Order management keeps every order in one queue with its status, so you can hold the doubtful ones before dispatch instead of after.

Invoicing does not change just because the money comes later

A COD order is still a GST transaction. The invoice has to be correct whether the customer paid on your website or paid the delivery boy.

GST billing generates the invoice on every order regardless of payment method — automatic CGST and SGST within your state, IGST outside it, HSN codes and per-product tax rates. The financial-year invoice series stays unbroken, which is what your CA cares about at quarter end.

The GST register exports to Excel, so reconciling a month of mixed prepaid and COD orders is one download rather than a day of copying.

What to do if COD is eating your margin

If your refused-delivery rate is already high, the first fix is not to remove COD — you would lose most of your orders. It is to add friction in exactly one place.

Partial COD takes a small advance online and leaves the balance for delivery. The advance is small enough that serious buyers do not blink, and large enough that impulse orders drop away on their own. It is available from the Pro plan.

Alongside that, RTO prevention tooling flags the orders that look risky before you ship them, so you can confirm those specifically rather than calling every customer.

Which plan includes it

COD is included in Starter at ₹4,990, along with the per-product and per-order-value controls, Razorpay, UPI and GST invoicing. That is the complete store, live in three to five days.

Pro at ₹9,990 adds Partial COD, Shiprocket, abandoned cart recovery, Meta Pixel and reviews. If COD is more than half your orders, this is the plan that pays for itself.

Elite at ₹19,990 adds Meta CAPI, WhatsApp automation, advanced analytics and multi-store admin.

All one-time. No monthly platform fee and no commission on your sales.