We’re having a situation that it not solvable with the current options in Shopify. When an order is partially fulfilled and the payment is authorized (not captured), there is no way to reduce the order total.
The scenario is:
A customer places an order for multiple items. Some get fulfilled an shipped.
The customer then asks to apply their gift card instead of charging their credit card.
Because there’s a fulfilled item, we’re stuck. We can’t edit the amount of that item. We can’t remove the item and add it back with a discount (not an option when purchasing labels through Shopify).
Our only options are to (a) leave the payment uncaptured so that the order FOREVER says that there is a balance due, or (b) charge the customer’s card and refund them, opening up the risk that they get angry, and subjecting us to credit card fees.
We either need to be able to remove and re-add the fulfilled item, without voiding the shipping label, or we need to just be able to add a discount to fulfilled items.
I know that a discount can be applied to products after the fact in certain cases, but our orders almost always include product-level discounts and order-level discounts and so they are not eligible for this, and we keep running into issues like these.
If there is any way that this could be considered for a future update?
For anyone that reads this, I really appreciate your time!
Hey @naomisirkin You’re right that a partially fulfilled order leaves you stuck here. I checked where exactly the line sits.
Order editing can add a discount to line items that are fully fulfilled, since the editing discounts docs cover both fulfilled and unfulfilled items. The hard block is specific to partially fulfilled line items. When a line is only partially fulfilled, a discount can’t be added to any quantity of it, even though other lines on the order stay discountable. That matches the constraint you hit with remove-and-re-add once a Shopify-purchased label exists.
On the gift card swap, order edits recalculate the order total but don’t move money or change how the payment is captured, so there’s no supported way to redirect an existing card authorization to a gift card.
This is useful feedback for the team to consider. Is the item you’re trying to discount partially fulfilled, or fully fulfilled?
In this particular case, the order had 2 line items. One was fully fulfilled and one was unfulfilled. For the unfulfilled item, we were able to remove it and re-add it with a discount. But for the fulfilled item, there was no option to add a discount, no option to remove it and add it without voiding the shipping label, and no option to not capture the payment, so we were stuck.
Thanks @naomisirkin! Since the blocked line was fully fulfilled, it shouldn’t be hitting the partially fulfilled exclusion. The editing discounts docs still say a discount can be added to individual fulfilled items, so what you’re describing isn’t the expected behavior.
Could you check the order’s payment status? An authorized but uncaptured payment is expected to show as Authorized, which is a different status from Pending. The considerations for editing orders page notes that order items and discounts might be uneditable while an order shows Pending.
If it shows Authorized and the discount option is still missing on that line, let me know which edit surface you’re using and what you see at that step (even a screenshot with any PII redacted would be great) , and I can take a closer look.
The order’s payment status is Authorized. We have not made any captures on the order. For the fulfilled line item, there is no option to add a discount when editing. We are just using Shopify’s native order editing, no custom apps or anything.
I’m happy to also send over some screenshots. Is there an email address I can send them to?
Thanks for the extra details via DM @naomisirkin! Your first post called it, and my earlier replies need a correction. The line isn’t blocked because it’s fulfilled. It’s blocked because it already carries an automatic product discount. That’s why the Add discount option isn’t offered on that line, and the editing-orders considerations explain the limit, automatic discounts can’t be edited during an order edit. A manual discount also can’t be stacked on top of one on the same line, which the docs don’t spell out, so the doc gap is fair.
That’s also why the workaround worked for the line you swapped out but not the fulfilled one. Removing and re-adding creates a fresh line with no automatic discount, so the manual discount applies cleanly. Fulfilled items can’t be removed or have quantities adjusted, so that trick isn’t available there. There’s no API workaround either, the order editing API supports discounts on already-fulfilled line items but applies the same discount rules.
On the gift card, order edits recalculate the order total but don’t move money or change how the payment is captured, so an existing card authorization can’t be redirected to a gift card. For the example order the realistic options are capturing and refunding, or leaving the payment uncaptured. Future adjustments need to happen before items are fulfilled.
I’ve submitted the feature request on your behalf and will look into making the documentation clearer on the fact that a line with an automatic discount can’t take an additional manual discount during an edit. Thanks for sharing this here and apologies again for the confusion!
Thank you so much! Essentially all of our orders have automatic discounts, so unfortunately this is something we run into pretty frequently. The best fix would be to just allow for order-level discounts when editing. It would solve a lot of headaches for us! Thanks again for your help!
You’re right that a partially fulfilled order leaves you stuck here. I checked where exactly the line sits.