We have a few orders in our system that we no longer need. We could leave them in there, except there are balances due (exact same amount as the balance owed since the order never got touched). The balances due are throwing off our finance reporting.
I'd love to just delete them out of the system, but I do not see a "Delete Order" button. I can only seem to delete Fees and Line/Subline Items. And those deletes don't hold because as soon as I leave the order and go back in those deleted items reappear!
Any ideas?
Hi Chelsea. No, an order cannot be deleted. You can remove line items, fees, etc. from it but once an order is saved in the system, it's there. We call these "ghost orders" and try to avoid them whenever possible. We often put notes in the Notes field for quick reference about the order. You should be able to delete the line/subline items as well as any fees and then Done to save. If that's not working for you, let me know.
j.
Well that worked. (It doesn't usually)
Not being able to delete orders is kind of dumb though...something to add to the Ideas Board!
Thanks
There are times where it would be nice, but we have also had a number of times where it has been helpful to have the full data trail of who did what in the order (payments, seat reservations/releases, etc.). I've come around to it being better to always have the data trail with nothing every completely deleted, even when that means we get times where someone starts an order and saves it instead of cancelling it with no information ever kept in it.
Jess Schuknecht said:There are times where it would be nice, but we have also had a number of times where it has been helpful to have the full data trail
I agree re: data trail, though in some cases there is no data worth saving, e.g. at the beginning of the pandemic, when we had built thousands of renewal orders for a subscription renewal campaign that never happened, containing tickets to shows that were never produced, etc.. I would have been nice to be able to scrub those completely.
Or, if not scrub them completely, at least to mark them as some form of "Inactive" or "Archive". One of the main reasons we have never turned on the ability for patrons to see their order history is that many orders created internally just look "ugly" for lack of a better word to someone who is just a person who normally buys tickets online. For them to log into their account and see an order that was created internally that was then returned, refunded, moved on account, and all many of other things just to eventually end up with nothing actually showing in the long run might have been useful internally, but is not particularly helpful to display.
And that can apply to on the website as well as internally in the application itself.
You could create an Order Category that says something like 'Inactive', as John suggested. As for getting it out of ticket history, you'd have to write a query to filter out rows you wouldn't want.
Deleting orders isn't possible because orders exist within the context of batches and they create auditable transactions. As others suggested, returning/deleting sub line items and overwriting fees is the only way.