With the EU Directive 2023/2673 taking effect on June 19, 2026, Shopify introduced self-serve order cancellations allowing customers to submit cancellation requests directly from their account page. This is a great addition — however, there is currently no way to automatically notify store staff when a customer submits a cancellation request.
The gap:
“New return request” exists as a Staff Notification event- “Return requested” exists as a Flow trigger
“Order cancellation requested” does NOT exist in Staff Notifications- “Order cancellation requested” does NOT exist as a Flow trigger
- No GraphQL field on the Order object reflects a pending cancellation request
Expected behavior: A Flow trigger (and ideally a Staff Notification event) analogous to “Return requested” / “New return request” — fired when a customer submits a cancellation request through self-serve customer accounts.
Why it matters: Without this, store staff have no automated way to be notified of pending cancellation requests. The only option is manually monitoring the Orders page using the “Customer request” filter. For stores processing high order volumes, this creates a real operational risk — especially given the EU directive requires merchants to process cancellation requests promptly (refund within 14 days).
This is a clear parity gap between return and cancellation workflows that should be straightforward to address.
Shopify doesn’t have that kind of trigger:
So, You have to create some cron/scheduled job which runs the graphql query given below every few minutes, keyed off created_at. And then pings your team on Slack or email
{
events(first: 50, query: "action:requested_edit_requested subject_type:ORDER") {
edges {
node {
__typename
... on BasicEvent {
id
createdAt
message
subject { ... on Order { id name } }
}
}
}
}
}
To poll incrementally, add created_at:>2026-07-21T00:00:00Z (your last run) to the query string.
more info at this community post: Detect self-serve cancellation request submission via webhook or API.
Or you can get a simple workaround: Create a custom view in the Order page
Open the Orders search and filter bar and pick Customer request:
Set it to Cancellation requested (leave the operator on Is):
Then Save the view and name it, so your team gets a one-click tab:
Not sure what you have set up but your owner account (or whoever is set to receive these emails) should get an email instantly. The moment the cancellation request is sent, this should also be sent:
I’m pretty sure this is the notification email:
If you’re open to using a third-party app, Flow Companion has an “Order event added” trigger that fires when an event is added to an order’s timeline.
Before creating the workflow, you need to enable the trigger in the app settings.
Once the setting is active, create a new workflow in Shopify Flow with the “Order event added” trigger. Add a condition to filter specifically for cancellation requests:
- Order event action is equal to
requested_edit_requested
- AND Order event message includes
requested cancellation
