Cancelling order lines lets you undo part of an order before the goods ship or the service is delivered. You can cancel one line, several lines, or every line, and you choose whether any money already paid becomes a refund or store credit. This article covers cancellations from the order page. If the goods have already shipped, use a return instead.
When to Use This
Use this when a customer no longer wants part of a purchase before it ships, such as one item in a mixed order, an add-on they changed their mind about, or an entire order you need to cancel line by line. You do not need to cancel the whole order when only one part needs to be undone. Cancelling only the affected lines keeps the rest of the order in place and still payable. When you cancel an add-on this way, Rhythm removes the balance due for that add-on and adjusts the invoice without cancelling the whole order.
If you need to return money the customer already paid, cancel the order rather than void it. Cancelling lets you choose a refund or store credit, while voiding undoes the whole order instead.
This does not apply to:
- A bulk-imported order. You cannot cancel an order in Rhythm if it was loaded through a bulk import, and no setting or role changes that.
- A line that has already fully shipped or is already fully cancelled. Rhythm only shows lines that still have quantity available to cancel. If a line has nothing left to cancel, it does not appear as an option.
- Goods you need back. Cancelling is for goods that have not shipped. If the goods already shipped and are coming back, use a return instead.
- Cancelling many orders at once. There is no bulk action for cancelling orders or order lines across multiple orders. If you try a mass update to Cancelled, Rhythm refuses the change instead of cancelling anything. Cancel each order individually.
Prerequisites
- You need access to create cancellations for this order.
- The order must not already be fully cancelled, must not have been loaded by a bulk import, and must have at least one line with quantity still available to cancel. The cancel action is available when the order is Open or Completed.
- If any line you plan to cancel has a cancellation fee, your Rhythm account must have a cancellation fee product configured, or Rhythm refuses the cancellation. A product must still be selected even when the fee itself is $0.
Steps
Cancel from the order instead of cancelling the invoice directly. Refunding an invoice line item by itself does not remove the related order items or event registration tickets. If the lines you cancel were not paid, Rhythm still removes the tickets, the order lines, and the related invoice. Rhythm does not generate a refund or store credit because there is no paid amount to return.
- Go to Orders & Inventory › Orders › Search, find the order, and open it.
- Select the cancel action in the order's action bar. It appears only when the order was not bulk-imported and has at least one line with quantity left to cancel. It does not appear on an order that is already cancelled.
- In the dialog, enter the quantity to cancel for each line you want to affect. Each quantity box starts with that line's full remaining cancellable quantity. Lower the number to cancel only part of a line, or set the line to zero to leave it unchanged.
- If you are cancelling an event registration package, set that package line's quantity above zero. Rhythm automatically sets its function fees, session fees, and add-ons to their full remaining quantity and locks them, so the package and everything that came with it are cancelled together. You cannot cancel a package while leaving one of its own add-ons unrefunded.
- If the order has payments, choose how Rhythm should handle the money already paid for the cancelled amount: issue a refund, or issue store credit the customer can use on a future purchase. This choice applies to the whole cancellation, so you cannot refund one line and credit another in the same cancellation.
- If you chose a refund and already handled it outside Rhythm, you can choose not to have Rhythm ask the payment gateway to move the money electronically. Rhythm records the refund without sending a new one.
- Choose what should happen if the payment gateway cannot process the electronic refund: stop the cancellation, or proceed anyway so you can reconcile it yourself afterward.
- Optionally add a note explaining the cancellation.
- Select Process Cancellation.
Result
Rhythm records the cancellation, reduces the order lines by the cancelled quantities, and cancels and refunds any tax or shipping charge tied specifically to a cancelled line. It issues the refund or credit you chose, charges any cancellation fee unless your account disables or waives it, notifies other applications about what was cancelled, and emails the customer using the cancellation confirmation template. You cannot suppress this email for an individual cancellation. To show which items were cancelled in that email's wording, add the Cancellation - Line Item merge field to the template. When every line on the order is cancelled, including tax, shipping, and discount lines, Rhythm marks the order itself as cancelled and is expected to cancel its related invoices too, so you do not need to cancel them separately. The order and invoice balances can take a few minutes to update to the new, lower amount, so do not assume the cancellation failed just because the balance looks unchanged right away.
Warning
A cancelled order cannot be restored or uncancelled. If you cancelled something in error, create a new order instead.
Variants
- Cancelling only part of a mixed order works the same way as cancelling everything, whether you are cancelling only a donation line or only an add-on. Set only the quantities you want to cancel to a non-zero amount, and leave the rest at zero. When the cancelled line was unpaid on a partially paid order, Rhythm creates a credit memo for that line and reduces the remaining invoice balance instead of issuing a refund.
- Cancelling a registration package locks and cancels its dependent fee and add-on lines with it, as described in step 4. If a dependent line does not have a clear link back to its package, Rhythm leaves it editable on its own instead of locking it to any package. For example, this can happen when that link was not set up correctly when the order was created.
- Cancelling a duplicate order removes that duplicate's own balance due. If the active registration is linked to the original order rather than the duplicate, cancelling the duplicate order does not change the registration's status.
- Cancelling an order on an installment schedule stops future installment collections without refunding amounts already collected. This can intermittently fail with an error that has no clear cause, then later succeed on the same order without any identifiable change, so wait and try again before escalating. If cancellation still does not go through, an administrator can leave the installment schedule Active and delete its remaining open entries instead. Saving that change marks the schedule Completed and stops future charges.
- Waiving or charging a cancellation fee for a specific line is handled separately, as its own task.
Side Effects
When you cancel a line that had committed stock, Rhythm releases that stock back to available. See How Orders Affect Your Stock for how commitments and their reversal work. The refund or credit calculation is covered separately. A cancelled line's status appears on the customer's Purchases/Orders 360 record the same way it appears on the order itself.
Warning
Nothing stops two people from cancelling the same line's remaining quantity at the same time. If that happens, both attempts can be accepted, and the line can end up over-cancelled. Check with colleagues before cancelling a line that someone else might also be working on.
If It Fails
| What you see | Likely cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| The cancel action is missing | The order was loaded by a bulk import, has no line left to cancel, or is already cancelled | You cannot cancel any of these through this dialog |
| "Unable to cancel imported orders" | The order was loaded by a bulk import | You cannot cancel this order |
| A quantity "exceeds amount available for cancellation" | You entered more than what remains on that line, or someone else cancelled some of it first | Lower the quantity, or reload the order to see its current state |
| "Unable to locate order line item" | The line no longer exists on the order as loaded | Reload the order and try again |
| A missing cancellation fee configuration message | A cancelled line's product charges a fee, but no cancellation fee product is set up | Go to your Orders & Inventory setup, edit the store, and assign an existing cancellation product or create a new one. Then retry the cancellation. Ask an administrator if you are not comfortable making that change yourself |
| A failure message even though the order now shows cancelled | The cancellation was recorded, but a follow-up step, such as the confirmation email, failed afterward | Check the order and the Cancellations & Returns tab before assuming nothing happened. The cancellation may already be in place |
| "No value was provided for parameter: businessUnitId" | The order has no business unit of its own and none can be read from a batch, or a related record, such as a dependent invoice, is blocking the cancellation and this message is masking it | Confirm the order has a business unit. If it does, look for a related invoice or other record that still needs to be resolved. In rare cases, the cancellation only completes after that dependency is cleaned up, for example by voiding and deleting a blocking invoice. Contact Support if you cannot identify it |
| "Unable to process cancellation" with no other explanation | A server-side problem processing that specific order or its data | Contact Support with the order number; retrying alone is unlikely to resolve it |
| A related payment that Rhythm cannot open | The payment record linked to the order's invoice is damaged or unreadable | Cancellation can fail here even when you chose to proceed without an electronic refund. Contact Support to have the payment record repaired |
| A cancellation record ID that already exists, in your sandbox | A sandbox refresh can leave cancellation ID sequencing out of step | Contact Support to have your sandbox's sequencing reset |
If you retry after a reported failure, check the order first. Each submission is treated as new, so retrying after a failure that actually succeeded can cancel the same lines a second time.
Related
After a cancellation is processed, you can look it up on its own. Goods that have already shipped are handled through a return instead of a cancellation.