Considerations for editing orders

Before you edit orders, review the considerations on this page to understand how changes can affect your store.

You can edit unfulfilled items in an order, but you can't remove fulfilled items or adjust their quantity. You can add and manage discounts for fulfilled and unfulfilled items.

When you edit an order, the order total updates to reflect these changes and the order displays whether a refund is owed to the customer or a balance is owed to you. Depending on the adjustment to your order, you might need to issue a refund or collect payment from your customer.

To edit orders, you need to be the store owner or have the Edit orders permission. Learn more about Staff permissions.

You can create test orders to verify that editing orders works with your store.

Accelerated checkouts

If you need to collect payment from your customer after you edit an order, then your customer won't have accelerated checkouts available through the new checkout. This affects checkouts, such as Apple Pay.

Analytics

If you edit an order after the day the order was placed, then the edit displays as a separate order in your reports. Reports display an edited order as a new order, even though a new order hasn't been created.

The following reports are affected:

Apps and order imports

You can't edit any orders that are imported into your Shopify admin. This means that any orders that are created by an app can't then be edited in the Shopify admin or by other apps. Only the app that creates an order can edit the order. However, if an app creates a draft order and it's later converted to an order, then the order can be edited in your Shopify admin, and by other apps.

Additionally, some apps might not recognize order edits. After you edit an order, the data in your apps might be incorrect. Order editing is more likely to affect fulfillment apps. For example, if you edit an order to remove an item, then your fulfillment app might not remove the item. You can accidentally ship an item that was removed from the order and not paid for.

You can check with the app's developer to verify if the app needs to be updated. App developers can learn more from Editing orders using GraphQL.

Currencies

If you edit an order after it's paid in a different currency, then the foreign exchange rate might be different than the rate that was previously used on the order, depending on the type of edit you're making:

If you add a new item, then the foreign exchange rate that's current at the time of the edit is used.
If you increase the quantity of an existing item, then the foreign exchange rate at the time the order was originally placed is used.
If you remove an item or lower the quantity of an existing item, then the foreign exchange rate at the time the order was originally placed is used so that your customer isn't affected by exchange rate fluctuations. Learn more about the currency risk for refunds.

If you aren't eligible to edit orders in other currencies, or if you can't edit the specific order, then you can refund the order, then create a draft order using the market that you want, and email an invoice in your customer's local currency.

Discounts

Manual line item discounts can be added, edited, or removed. Some order level discounts are recalculated after an order is edited. The Avalara Tax Compliance is compatible with editing discounts in orders.

Editing manual discounts

You can add a manual discount to an existing line item in the order, or update or remove a discount on an existing line item in the order.

Order level discounts can't be added, removed or updated. Additionally, the following line item discount types can't be edited:

discount codes
script discounts
automatic discounts

Discount recalculation

Some discounts aren't recalculated after you edit an order. To make sure your customer is paying the correct amount, check the Total carefully on orders with discounts.

The following discount types are recalculated when an order is edited:

Percentage discounts that apply to the entire order. These discounts are recalculated when you add new items or change item quantities.
Discount codes for a fixed amount that apply to specific products or collections. These discounts are recalculated when you adjust the quantity of an item that already has the discount applied. This type of discount is recalculated only if the discount code can be used more than one time per order.

Fulfillment services

Contact your fulfillment services to verify whether you can edit items that are fulfilled by the fulfillment service.

If your fulfillment services don't work with order edits, then editing an item can cause missed or incomplete orders.

If your fulfillment services do work with order edits, then new items or new quantities added to an order become new items to fulfill. Items that are removed from an order are no longer fulfillable items.

Orders with pending payment

If an order is in Pending payment status, then you might be unable to edit order items and discounts. Learn more about orders with pending payments.

Shop Pay Installments orders

You can't edit orders that were paid for using Shop Pay Installments. If you need to make changes to an order paid with Shop Pay Installments, then you can refund the original order and create a new order for your customer. Learn more about Shop Pay Installments.

Orders with taxes and duties

You can edit unfulfilled orders that have duties and taxes charged, such as DDP (Delivery Duty Paid) orders. If an order contains fulfilled line items, then you can't edit this order. Duties and taxes aren't calculated on custom items.

When editing an order, duties and taxes display as Duties (original) and Taxes (original) until you update the order. After you edit an order with duties and taxes, you need to review the updated order total and verify that it's accurate. Click Update order to recalculate duties and taxes. After the order is updated, you can then send an invoice to your customer, accept a payment, or issue a refund.

Pickup in store orders

An in-store pickup order can be edited either before or after you prepare that order. You can edit in-store pickup orders only in your Shopify admin or on the Shopify app, not the POS app.

Risk analysis

If you collect payment from a customer after an order is edited, then the order's fraud analysis indicators and fraud protection status can change.

Shipping

Shipping methods and rates aren't recalculated when you edit an order, but you can add a custom shipping charge. If you swap or add items to an order and the weight or dimensions of the order increases, then you might need to charge more for shipping.

Orders that have local delivery as the delivery method can’t be edited. You also can't change the delivery method of your order, such as change from shipping to pickup.