There are situations where orders can be placed and fulfilled in Shopify, but payment is not captured.
In this article, we cover the dangers of using the “Marked as Paid” feature in Shopify.
Draft orders “marked as paid” can result in reported revenue – without payment!
Shopify allows a Draft order to be “marked as paid”. As they say in their documentation this does not trigger payment capture. We have seen situations where shops have lost thousands by not properly closing out draft orders and actually capturing the payment.
Any orders “Marked as paid” will show up in the MANUAL payment section of your summary report and should be watched to prevent loss.
As a reminder – the “Mark as Paid” function in Shopify was designed to be used in situations when you’ve already received payment for the order (and that payment didn’t go through the Shopify system), or, when you are importing previously-paid orders into Shopify from another platform and you don’t want to double-charge the customer.
“Mark as Paid” is not meant to be used to close out a draft order unless one of the two conditions above apply. Staff training may be necessary if you continue to see draft orders marked as paid, in your Shopify account.
Properly convert draft orders in Shopify to avoid missing any payments.
When the order is paid for or when you set payment terms, the draft order converts to an order and is listed on your Orders page. The key thing here is that the payment, or the payment terms, are added. Simply marking the draft order “Marked As Paid” bypasses the actual payment collection. So your sales will be properly stated but your “money” will not be collected. YIKES.
To learn the various situations where Draft Orders are appropriate, see this section in Shopify documentation.
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Bookkeep helps you track discrepancies between what Shopify says you should expect (payment-wise) based on orders, and what you actually receive, on a daily basis. So you’ll never miss a payment again.
