ChannelEngine: cancelations
About this article
This article describes the cancelations process on ChannelEngine.
Table of contents
Introduction
There are two possible scenarios for handling an order: shipping it or canceling it. Cancelations work in a similar way to shipments.
To handle cancelations via the ChannelEngine interface, select an order to see its details. Below the order section, you see two options: Create shipment and Create cancelation. Click Create cancelation and a popup opens. You can fill in the reason for the cancelation, add an optional cancelation comment, and a Merchant cancelation number – the unique number of the cancelation in your own order management system, which makes it easier to find the cancelation later.
If you do not have a merchant number, you can fill in the order number or any other unique number – as long as it is unique. I.e.: you cannot use 123 for every cancelation, but 123, 124, 125, etc. is okay.
To see an overview of all created cancelations, go to Orders, Cancelations in the left-hand side menu.
Cancelations are sorted from the newest ID to the lowest. The individual columns and their headers provide some information on each cancelation, and by selecting the 'eye' icon you can see further details. The top of the screen contains three filters and a search function.
- Search - allows you to search for specific cancelations based on the ChannelEngine order ID, Channel order number, Shipment ID, Merchant order number, the Merchant shipment number, and the last name on the invoice address.
- Channel filter - allows you to filter the cancelations for one or more specific marketplaces. If you deselect all, all channels are included in the result.
- Type filter - allows you to filter on a specific type of shipment. The Canceled status is selected by default. If you are looking only for cancelations, it is not recommended to change this filter
- Status filter - allows you to filter on the two different types of statuses possible for a shipment: Pending and Closed. However, cancelations are always marked as Closed as they do not depend on data that can be updated – like track-and-trace information.
Cancelation requests
While most marketplaces do not support cancelations once the order has been paid and released, there are some exceptions. Also, note that cancelations are not the same as returns in this context. Returns can only be created once a shipment has been completed.
As long as an order is not Completed (i.e.: shipped), some channels offer the option for customers to create a cancelation request for an order. When ChannelEngine imports the cancelation request, it checks the current order status. If the order is already In Progress, ChannelEngine flags the order stating that a cancelation has been requested.
If you see this status, which is retrievable via the ChannelEngine API and includes a notification, and the order is not yet at a stage in your logistical process where it cannot be canceled anymore (e.g.: ready for shipping/shipped), it is recommended that you cancel the order through the usual cancelation method. If the shipment cannot be stopped anymore, reach out to either the customer or the channel to get the items processed as a return.
Auto-cancelation
If an order has the status New and ChannelEngine receives a cancelation request, the order is automatically canceled. This is due to the fact that the order is unlikely to have been processed, and by creating a cancelation ChannelEngine can prevent the order from unnecessarily entering your logistic process.
There are, however, situations in which this is undesirable:
- If you handle orders manually via the ChannelEngine web interface, orders cannot be acknowledged and remain on New until shipped.
- If you have a high volume of orders causing timing issues, as the orders are fetched simultaneously with the order/cancelation import from a channel.
In those cases, you can disable the auto-cancelation feature.
Go to Advanced settings under Settings. There you can find the option Disable auto order cancelation for new orders. When this option is enabled, ChannelEngine does not cancel any orders with status New if a cancelation request is received.
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