Hey everyone,
A client placed an order but forgot to apply the discount code at checkout, is there a way to apply the code after the purchase is made? Note that the payment method is cash on delivery
Thanks
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@RaniaHa On the discounts tab in your Shopify platform you should have an option to create shareable link, this actually applies the discount once used. You can incorporate this url into a button on your email so all they have to do is click the button, takes them to a landing page and the discount is applied for them.
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Hi @RaniaHa
At present, Shopify does not support applying a discount code to a created order.
But your customer placed an order with a cash-on delivery method, so you can cancel their order and place another order from the admin panel to a discount code.
If you feel like my answer is helpful, please mark it as a SOLUTION. Let me know if you have any questions!
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Shopify needs to provide this feature. Hereâs one scenario where it applies:
- Customer creates order but either forgets to add discount code or it isnât applied for some reason (it happens)
- Customer reaches out to have discount applied after the fact
- Since this functionality doesnât currently exists, store manager refunds order for amount of discount
- If this is a discount that is limited to one use per customer, this customer could now use this discount on a future order, circumventing the âone use per customerâ rule
Not having this functionality leaves a loophole for the system to be abused. Cancelling the order and placing a new order is not an elegant solution.
Please incorporate this feature, Shopify.
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absolutelyâŚI cannot believe shopify does not support this. Customers have issues all the time with discount codes not applying for whatever reason, we should be able to post apply a discount code and have that amount automatically refunded.
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@Shopify_77 Please add this!!
Also the only workaround doesnât work either, which would be issuing a partial refund. Partial refunds does not correctly subtract the portion of Sales Tax which makes reporting completely useless. Any merchant issuing a partial refund will have skewed data in reporting. Partial refunds only deducts the product amount. Meaning sales tax is untouched, wrong and over-reported. Discounts and partial refunds need to subtract the appropriate sales tax.
Give merchants more control over their order process. Almost every other ecommerce platform allows this.
Having the ability to add the coupon code to the order which would issue the partial refund of the coupon amount and subtract the appropriate gross sale and tax amount AND have this coupon code expire for the customers email. Surely a company like Shopify can handle basic math and see the need on why this is so important.
This is such basic ecommerce functionality it blows my mind I have to actually type this out.
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exactly !
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The issue is that Shopify is such a huge machine at this point, getting any feature implemented quickly is near impossible. They have their own feature roadmap, so unless something is a large bug it has to get added to the list of existing feature requests, brought up and discussed in development meetings, slated for development, release, etc. Smaller, agile companies can turnaround a basic feature like this in 24-48 hours, fully tested. I know. I used to own one, and we would regularly take a feature request like this and have it implemented in hours.
Shopify no doubt has the technical resources to quickly turn around a feature like this, but there is probably so much red tape it has to go through that it will take months unfortunately, even if they deem it a worthy feature.
If @Shopify_77 would start acknowledging basic feature requests like this one that are glaringly obvious and creating a means to turn them around quickly instead of including them in a monolithic release like âWinter '22â, they would win a lot of raving fans, starting with me.
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Makes sense as Iâve seen posts about getting this fixed from 2018-2019 and itâs not fixed. The sad thing is the majority of small merchants donât even realize that their tax summary in reports are 100% wrong if any merchant issues a partial refund (since partial refunds do not change the sales tax, itâs always over-reporting). If any merchants are using the tax reporting feature in Shopify to remit this tax, they are over paying sales tax that was not collected! This should almost be a legal issue in my opinion.
I did a test where I made a draft order for $5,000 + 12% sales tax ($600 tax) total amount $5,600 and marked it as paid. I issued a partial refund for $5,599 and the reporting summary for sales tax was still $600! This goes to show how skewed and useless reporting is when giving partial refunds as it shows the original sales tax amount before the partial refund took place. Thatâs right a 99% refund and it still shows $600 floating in the sales tax report.
This is a unlikely type of partial refund but for high volumes of partial refunds, it all adds up and the discrepancy becomes larger and larger. If any merchants do partial refunds like this for a restocking fee, then thatâs a huge issue for them. Or if a customer who is exempt for sales tax, needs a refund of JUST that sales tax. You canât isolate the tax to be refunded. So their sales receipt is wrong and the merchants reporting is completely skewed.
These are not small issues @Shopify_77 .
This also means gross sales are underreporting as it only subtracts from the product amount.
Large businesses know this and use accounting software, but this also pushes wrong data into accounting systems resulting in merchants/bookkeepers having to make an extra spread sheet to revise every partial refund so that taxes are correct in their system.
For high volume merchants who constantly give partial refunds for customers who forget their coupon code (which is so common in ecommerce!). Itâs adds so much extra administrative burden to everyone.
Trust me, I rather not have to type out this rant, merchants have enough work to do trying to scale their business and this tax issue is unbelievable.
Iâll check back in âWinter 2050â for an update, lol!
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merchants have enough work to do trying to scale their business
Amen! So much to do. Weâre supposed to be paying for software to make our lives easier and free up time, not pile more on.
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so true. Great points!
Though there is no way actually defined to do it, we can definitely walk-around a bit.
Like a lot of people here are suggesting to cancel the order an place it again. An easier way that we use in our organization is to remove the item(s) in the order and add them again. This time we have the option of giving in-line discounts (amount as well as percentage off).
Hopefully, this helps you all.
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Thanks for the idea but this changes one problem for two other problems. If you remove the items and re-add them you are making gross sales x2 and you are simulating a full refund which will greatly inflate refunds in the reports. For example if you edit and order remove a $1,000 product and re-add it. Now gross sales will be $2,000 when it should only be $1,000 and the refunds will be $1,000 where it would most likely be only 15% or whichever the coupon code is, which would be the partial refund. If we are giving a partial refund we donât want to simulate a FULL refund that would make it seem like we are refunding way more than we actually are.
So now the sales tax is solved but you have double gross sales and inflated returns. Just makes the reports more and more useless.
Appreciate the help though.
Here is a screen recording showing the sales tax issue for Shopify support and merchants so they can see how skewed the reports really are when issuing partial refunds. It also skews net sales because sales tax isnât adjusted. https://www.loom.com/share/bffc884184f140d69513171cc7e9fae2
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One other thing that this workaround does not address is the fact that the customer still has the original discount code that can be used again. If this was intended to be a single-use discount, theyâve just circumvented that rule. Rules like this are provided by Shopify for us merchants to use, but by not allowing discounts to be applied to existing orders, theyâve given customers a way to break those rules. This should be considered a feature with a bug that needs to be addressed, in my opinion.
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Wow, what a mess! Thanks @Sam-123 for throughly explaining this and showing in clear detail whatâs happening here. We are overpaying to the government by using the Shopify tax report. We use this report to give to our bookkeeper so they can then update our books and ultimately file our sales tax reports. Wow, just wow.
One other result of this bug is that it skews the refund metrics. Refunds are a major metric to keep track of and monitor. Especially if you are seeking funding from investors, banks, etc because it shows the health of your business. By doing partial refunds to simulate using a discount code after the fact, our refund percent of gross profit number will look higher that it actually is, which could be a red flag for potential investors. Damn.
Anyone here have any clout at Shopify to get the right people to look at this problem and recognize the significance?
@Sam-123 is right. It does feel like an episode of Black Mirror (love that reference!)
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absolutely, we get this fairly frequentlyâŚcustomer says âI didnât get a code, or code doesnât workâ so we apply a discount after the sale. Week later, customer uses the code that âdidnât workâ!
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Yeah itâs really too bad! I guess all we can do is hope more and more merchants realize and complain about this. That would force Shopify to roll out this essential update. The sad thing is that I can guarantee the majority of merchants donât even know this is happening. I actually reached out to support 5 separate times and each support staff didnât even know the reports (net sales and sales tax) got skewed with partials refunds! Even they were shocked. That says something.
Itâs like a glitch that no one is talking about because it just slides under the radar and people donât even think about it because its hard to spot out. Most stores have a bunch of revenue already in the reports, so itâs hard to see whatâs actually happening on the backend. Itâs only easy to spot out on a demo store with no revenue since you can clearly see the isolated difference and what is happening to net sales and sales tax.
Even the support staff understood this vital issue and were shocked. But all they can say is that they would send this to their internal team and hope it gets fixed at some point, but they couldnât say when or if it would be fixed. Just the typical boilerplate response they give to any complaint.
So Iâm hopeful more and more merchants realize this issue and start pushing this up.
Every serious merchant who is scaling and getting volume will be issuing partials refunds for the coupon codes that their customer forget to use. And there is no way to apply the coupon code to this order, circumventing the system like you mentioned, AND skewing financial data that is so critical for paying taxes and giving proper net sales.
I donât think we can do anything about customers being able to use their coupon code again, but we can record all partial refunds in a Google Sheet to let our bookkeepers know to subtract the sales tax out of these partial refunds.
No matter what though, Shopify Reports will be wrong and should be ignored for inaccuracy, especially if you give many partial refunds per month as it gets more and more skewed. Just look at this reports as a rough overview. And do not rely on the tax summary to remit taxes, this must be dealt with externally in QuickBooks or another accounting system.
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Yup! That is a big loophole and people regularly try to exploit it. The proposed âworkaroundâ makes matters worse as several posts here have reported. Shopify needs to fix this problem asap. Until this is fixed, we cannot rely on any of the financial metrics reported in our Admin dashboard. We can use it for a very general guideline maybe, but itâs useless for real financial reporting.
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Hi @7over @whitewater @overlandaddict , this sounds like the best news yet. On the 6th time of reaching out to @Shopify_77 Support in frustration regarding these issues, showing the detailed screen recordings on how the reports are skewed. I finally got an answer that looks promising.
Iâve attached a screenshot of our conversation and you can see outlined in green that they have determined the issue and plan to fix it within 48 hours. I canât believe my eyes when I read this.
Iâm not going to count on it but this seems very promising!! I donât think they are fixing the coupon code being applied to past orders but at least the reports and analytics should be correct. I guess weâll wait and see.
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