You've just finished painting the dining room "Celadon Pottery" from the Martha Stewart color palette, and even Martha would be impressed with the job. But you have unused brushes, painter tape, and drop cloths left over, and no opening on your calendar for another painting project until 2010.

A frantic search for the Lowe's receipt in the pile of post-painting debris proves fruitless. Later, you sheepishly explain to the Lowe's clerk that you want to return the unused paint supplies for a refund, but you've lost the receipt. No worries: Chances are, you'll be out of there, with your full refund, in just a few minutes.

Lowe's has developed a returns system that lets customers quickly return items, with or without a receipt, without any hassles. That's because the system lets Lowe's associates scan returned items' bar codes and validate the original invoice information, including each item purchased, its purchase price, and the payment methods used, so clerks can efficiently process accurate refunds.

"Customers don't look forward to returns at most retailers," says Lowe's CIO Steve Stone. "If we can make this process as painless as possible, it's yet another reason for them to choose Lowe's."

In the home-improvement segment of retail, customers might make several visits to a store for a single project, often buying more supplies than the project requires, so exchanges and refunds are common. It's also common to lose receipts in the heat of a home-improvement project, and Lowe's needed to find a way to let associates efficiently process those returns. The new system also protects against fraudulent returns, such as trying to return a stolen item. The system knows when all quantities of an item on an original sale have been returned and blocks attempts at duplicate returns.

The company's old returns system was labor-intensive even when it came to processing returns with receipts, says Charnetta Davis, a project manager in Lowe's stores process development division who worked on the new system. Associates would have to go through each paper receipt, circle the returned items, and process each return separately. There was also a greater risk of incorrect refunds, as refunds would typically be made at the current price rather than what products sold for at the time of purchase.