Canceling, archiving and deleting orders

You can cancel, archive, and delete orders. Canceling an order means that you're stopping an order that's in process. Archiving an order means that you're done with the order and want to remove it from your open orders list. Deleting an order means that you are removing it from your Shopify admin.

Cancel an order

Canceling an order indicates that you are halting order processing. For example, if a customer requests a cancellation or you suspect the order is fraudulent, then you can cancel the order to help prevent staff or fulfillment services from continuing work on the order. You can also cancel an order if an item was ordered and isn't available.

Depending on the state of the order when you cancel it, you might need to do follow-up actions.

Order cancellation and follow-up actions

State of the order	Follow-up actions
Paid for but no items are fulfilled	When you cancel the order, there are two refund options: Refund the full amount now: A full refund is automatically issued to your customer. This option is selected by default. Refund later: Refund isn't issued to your customer when you cancel an order. You can't issue a partial refund during the cancellation process, so you can select this option to issue a partial refund later or to investigate before issuing a refund. To avoid chargebacks, ensure that you track non-refunded orders for follow-up. If you use a third-party fulfillment service, then you might need to follow up. If you purchased a shipping label for this order, then you can void the label.
Fulfilled but payment isn't collected	Canceling an order prevents you from collecting payment. To get items returned, use the returns process.
Not paid and not fulfilled	Archive the order if it isn't automatically archived.

Note

Credit card transaction fees aren't returned to you when you issue a refund.

After you cancel an order, the details about what items are restocked and refunded is stored in the order's Timeline.

When you cancel an order, the payment status changes as follows:

• If the payment wasn't captured, then the payment status changes to Voided.
• If the payment was fully refunded, then the payment status changes to Refunded.

Later, if you issue a partial refund for a canceled order, then the payment status changes to Partially refunded.

If an order is in Pending payment status, then you might be unable to cancel it. Learn more about orders with pending payments.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.

2. Click the order that you want to cancel.

3. Click More actions > Cancel order.

4. In the Refund payment section, choose how you want to refund the payment:

   • To issue a full refund now, select Now.
   • To issue a refund later, select Later.

5. In the Reason for cancellation drop-down menu, select the reason of order cancellation.

6. Optional: In the Staff note field, enter an internal note about the order cancellation.

7. Optional: To restock the refunded items to your inventory, select Restock inventory.

8. Optional: To notify your customer about the order cancellation, select Send a notification to the customer.

9. Click Cancel order.

Archive orders manually

Most orders that you're done with are automatically archived, but you can archive orders manually if you need to. If you disabled automatic archiving, then you can keep your open orders view tidy by manually archiving orders.

By default, the following orders are automatically archived:

• orders that are paid for and fulfilled
• orders that are fully refunded
• orders that are partially refunded, fulfilled, and have no balance owing

Note

If your orders are not archived automatically, you can enable Automatically archive the order in the Order Processing section of the Checkout settings in your Shopify admin.

Archived orders are displayed on the Closed order view.

Steps:

Desktop

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.

2. From the Orders page, click the number of the order that you want to archive.

3. Click More actions, and then click Archive orders.

The order status is Archived.

You can also perform a bulk action to archive or unarchive multiple orders.

Delete an order

Deleted orders are removed from your Shopify admin and are no longer tracked in reports. Only the following types of order can be deleted:

• orders that were paid with a manual payment method
• orders that started as a draft and were then marked as paid
• test orders that were paid with the Bogus Gateway, or with Shopify Payments in test mode
• orders that were imported through the Shopify API

Note

Before you can delete an order, it must be archived or canceled. Orders where payment has been processed through Shopify POS, your online checkout, or paid for with a gift card can be archived, but not deleted.

If you purchased a shipping label for the order but didn't use it, then void the label before deleting the order.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.

2. Click an archived or canceled order.

3. Click Delete order, and then click Delete order to confirm.