Order Cancellations

When an order is canceled on the sales channel, DropStream picks up the cancellation and stops the order from being fulfilled. If the order hasn’t reached the warehouse yet, it’s canceled in DropStream right away. If the warehouse already has it, DropStream asks the warehouse to cancel it too. Either way, you don’t have to find the order and cancel it by hand in two places.

A cancellation is a kind of order modification. DropStream detects both in the same check, but handles cancellations separately because stopping a shipment is more urgent than editing one.

Use cases

• Customer changed their mind. A customer cancels minutes after ordering. The order is canceled in DropStream before it’s ever sent to the warehouse.
• Stop a shipment in flight. The merchant cancels an order the warehouse already has. DropStream sends the cancellation so the warehouse doesn’t pick and ship it.
• Fraud or payment failure. The merchant cancels an order flagged by their payment provider. It never reaches the warehouse, or is pulled back if it already has.
• Partial cancellation. A customer cancels one item from a multi-item order. That line is canceled, and the rest of the order continues.
• Cancel the unshipped remainder. Part of an order has shipped, and the customer cancels the rest. DropStream cancels only the items that haven’t shipped.

How cancellations are detected

Cancellations are picked up by the same Change & cancellation detection schedule as other modifications, in the Sales Orders group on the connection page. By default it runs every 5 minutes. See Order Modifications.

A cancellation is applied even when the order is on hold for review — the hold ends and the order is canceled.

What happens to the order

If every line on an order is canceled — one at a time, or in a single edit — the whole order is canceled.

The order is only closed once the warehouse agrees. If the warehouse refuses, the order stays open in DropStream, because the warehouse may still ship it.

Track a cancellation at the warehouse

While a cancellation is on its way to the warehouse, a badge next to the status shows its progress:

When the warehouse can’t cancel

If the warehouse refuses the cancellation, the order shows Cancellation rejected and a banner: The store canceled this order, but the warehouse could not cancel it.

This usually means the warehouse has already started picking or packing the order, or that the warehouse platform can’t accept cancellations. To resolve it:

1. Open the Activity tab to see the warehouse’s reason.
2. Contact the warehouse directly to stop the order, if it hasn’t shipped yet.
3. If the order ships anyway, handle it as a return with the customer.

If a cancellation shows Cancellation failed, DropStream couldn’t deliver it. Contact support@getdropstream.com to have it resent, or cancel the order directly in the warehouse.

Canceled quantities in rules

Rules see order lines net of cancellations:

• order_line.qty_ordered is the quantity still ordered, after cancellations.
• order_line.qty_canceled is the quantity canceled on the sales channel. Add the two together to get the original quantity.
• A fully canceled line is left out of order.order_lines, so quantifiers like has any order_lines and accumulators skip it.
• order.subtotal reflects the canceled lines too.

For example, to flag orders where the customer canceled part of the order:

rule "Flag partially canceled orders"
  when
    order has any order_lines with (order_line.qty_canceled > 0)
  then
    set order.custom.partially_canceled to true
  end
end

Get notified

Add these alert types to an alert policy to hear about cancellations that need attention:

• Warehouse Rejected Cancellation — the warehouse refused to cancel an order.
• Cancellation Delivery Failed — a cancellation couldn’t be sent to the warehouse.
• Cancel Order Failed — DropStream couldn’t cancel the order and it needs to be reprocessed.