Practical ways to “bulk-duplicate” orders in the Shopify Admin?

Functions
1

Hi all,
My client wants to select multiple orders in the Admin and duplicate them in bulk. The Admin currently allows single duplication via Orders > More actions > Duplicate, but I can’t find an official way to perform this for multiple selected orders.

Context/constraints:

  • This is a recurring monthly workflow.

  • Many customers pay by bank transfer (manual payment), not only by credit card.

  • Store plan: Basic.

What I’m considering

  1. Build it with the Admin API (GraphQL)

    • Fetch original orders → create Draft Orders (draftOrderCreate) replicating items, customer/shipping info, discounts, notes/tags where possible → optionally draftOrderInvoiceSend / draftOrderComplete.

    • Concern: Protected customer data (PII) on a Basic plan—what scopes/approvals are needed to copy names/addresses, and is approval realistic?

  2. CSV export/import – not preferred (client wants to stay inside the Admin UI).

  3. Subscription apps – not suitable (the business relies heavily on manual bank transfers).

Questions

A. Admin bulk action:
Can an Admin UI Extension/Action add a custom bulk action to the Orders index that passes selected IDs to an embedded app, which then creates Draft Orders in bulk? Is this supported for Orders, not just Products/Customers?

B. PII access on Basic:
If we create a Partner-created app with proper scopes (e.g., read_customers, read_orders, write_draft_orders) and obtain Protected customer data access, can we legally/technically copy customer name/address to new Draft Orders on a Basic plan?
If approval is denied, which fields would be redacted—making a faithful duplicate impossible?

C. Fidelity limits:
What parts of an order can be reproduced reliably via API?

  • Shipping lines (copy title/price as is?)

  • Discounts (order-level vs line-level), fees, notes, tags, metafields

  • Inventory/Tax discrepancies between the original order and the new draft

  • Manual payments using Payment Terms + sending invoices from Drafts—best practice?

D. Alternatives / Best practices:

  • Any officially recommended pattern to “bulk copy orders to drafts”?

Proposed architecture:

  • Embedded app adds a bulk action to Orders index → passes selected IDs → server loops draftOrderCreate.

  • For large selections, use GraphQL Bulk Operations to fetch source data efficiently.

  • For bank transfers, attach Payment Terms, then draftOrderInvoiceSend.

Any guidance on feasibility, required approvals, and gotchas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

2

I’ve decided to try implementing the workflow using draftOrderDuplicate.
Also, I confirmed that accessing PII is possible when using a Custom App.
I’ll proceed with testing this approach, so I’ll close this thread for now.

3

Glad you found a solution for this and thanks for posting it here :slight_smile: