Why do my online orders end up in draft status?

[Monsterfactory]

Hi everyone, so I launched my new site yesterday and have had a influx of orders already, some have gone through as orders but there’s quite a lot sitting in draft orders! Can anyone explain to me why orders may end up here? I only sell online and take card payment or PayPal express yet the draft orders are giving me options to send invoices etc. Please help! Thanks.

[Andrew]

Hi @Monsterfactory, 

Congratulations on the launch!

That's a great question. There are a few possible reasons why your orders might end up in the abandoned cart section of your store.

First off, it's good to know that an abandoned cart is created in your store when our system believes that checkout was not completed.

In other words, when a visitor to your store picks a product, adds it to their cart, and then takes it to checkout they need to complete the checkout process for our system to recognize it as a completed order.

If a customer has paid for an order but it still shows as an abandoned cart in your store, this usually means the customer has closed their checkout window too soon, left the website too soon, or otherwise failed to reach the "thank you" page after payment. In this instance, we record that as an abandoned checkout.

The solution to this is usually really straightforward: include a message on your store (preferably somewhere on the customer's checkout journey) that advises customers to wait after payment until they see a "thank you" page.

You could use the language editor to change the language somewhere along the way in the checkout process to guide your customers.

In the meantime, if you can confirm that the current abandoned orders are paid for and that the money has been deposited into your account, you can always recreate the abandoned cart as a draft order, mark it down as paid, and fulfill from there.

At this time, there's no way to turn an abandoned cart into an order without payment confirmation. Recreating it as a draft order would be the next best thing and allows you to complete the order.

I hope that helps!