Invoiced Items getting removed from checkout

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

A merchant is experiencing an issue where items disappear from draft invoices between creation and customer checkout.

The Problem:

  • Draft invoices are created with multiple items (e.g., 3 products)
  • Customers receive the correct invoice email showing all items
  • When clicking “Complete Purchase,” only some items appear on the payment page (e.g., 1 of 3)
  • The charge amount correctly reflects only the visible items
  • No error messages appear regarding inventory or other issues

Additional Details:

  • The missing items also disappear from the draft invoice and order records in Shopify’s backend
  • Inventory, sales channels, and product variants all appear normal
  • Test invoices with identical items work correctly
  • This is a self-fulfilled store (not dropshipping), and the merchant has used Shopify for years without encountering this issue

Status: The problem remains unresolved with no clear cause identified.

Summarized with AI on October 29. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

We’ve had an issue with a few customers now where some items on their draft invoice get removed when they go to check out. The customers don’t receive any error messages like inventory issues or anything like that, the items simply disappear from the payment page as if they were never invoiced for some of the items.

The customers have sent us the draft invoice email they received, which has all of the correct items, but then when they click Complete Purchase in the email and they go to the payment page, only one item of the three appears. The total due is correct in terms of just charging for one item that is displayed, but of course the customer expects to see (and pay for) the 3 items they were invoiced for.

Oddly, if I go back to the customers’ draft invoices and the orders in Shopify, the items are missing from there as well. I checked inventory, sales channels, and variants on the missing items and they all seem fine. I created a draft with the exact same items for myself and everything worked as expected, so I’m completely at a loss as to how this can be happening.

Any ideas? Has anyone experienced similar issues?

2

Hi Alan,

Thanks for replying. I’m not entirely sure what you mean in terms of going back to the supplier. Just to clarify, the store is our own and, although we track the wholesale vendors who send us the products, we are selling from our shop and fulfilling ourselves (i.e. it’s not a drop shipping setup). We create the draft invoices (of our products) from Shopify for our customers, then send those out to them via the Send Invoice email for payment and then we pack and ship the products. The issue is, something happens from the time we send the draft invoice until the customer goes to pay the invoice where items seem to just disappear. We’ve been using Shopify for quite a number of years and have never seen an issue quite like this one.

Hope that makes sense. Thanks again!