Changes coming to "cancellation of orders"
Pretty soon we’re going to be rolling out changes to the order-detail interface that will change the way you cancel orders. These changes are coming about because we wanted to tighten-up the behavior of cancelled orders – specifically, we wanted to clean up some of the breadcrumbs that are created when an order simply stops being valid.
The most notable change for our users will be that we’re no longer going to allow you to “reactivate” orders once they’ve been cancelled. We’re going to give you plenty of warning about this in the interface, so there shouldn’t be any confusion. Why are we doing this? Well, when you cancel an order, we no longer consider the order valid, and behind the scenes we clean up a lot of the junk left behind by it – this makes your account faster and more efficient. Allowing users to reactivate orders means that we need to put all of the stuff we removed back into place, exactly where it was. Also, we weren’t really happy with the workflow aspect of reactivating orders. For example, it creates a lot of strange looking results in you reports when an order has been removed from the workflow, then inexplicably added back in. To alleviate any concerns, creating a “re-ship” will provide similar results to reactivating an order, but of course, it will create a new order (better for your workflow and reports!).
We’re also going to be limiting the time-window when you can cancel orders. Cancelling an order after it’s been dispatched, for example, doesn’t make a lot of sense. The customer will still receive the package – and now you’ve got an order in a cancelled state that has been charged and shipped. Pretty soon you won’t be able to cancel orders that have shipment data (the tracking number will be needed to be voided first) or packing slips.
When you click the cancel button, you’ll be presented with a dialog that looks like this:
Depending on the state of the order, you’ll be presented with different options to accompany the cancellation process. In this example, you’ll be required to cancel the future scheduled payments for the order, and you’ll have the option to clear any “to-do’s” for the order. If the order had been deducted, you’d have the option to reverse the inventory deduction and return the items to inventory. If there is a balance between what we’ve charged and what we’ve refunded (or voided), you’ll get notified too so that you can perform a refund (if necessary).
We hope these changes will tighten up your accounts, provide better functionality, and maintain cleaner, more understandable reporting.
