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How to get rid of test orders from Shopify? A step-by-step guide

Last updated: August 01, 2024
Written and researched by experts at AvadaLearn more about our methodology

By Sam Nguyen

CEO Avada Commerce

One of the most common troubles when it comes to testing the payment gateway for Shopify stores or turning on the test mode is having too many test orders. If you are running a store on Shopify, you must have heard or suffered from this problem.

However, Shopify users do not know how to get rid of test orders from Shopify. That’s why we have this article today which will surely bring you a step-by-step guide to help you delete them and prevent them from skewing your sales figures or products sold figures.

Let’s get started!

How to get rid of test orders from Shopify

According to Shopify, users can delete those types of orders which are:

  • Orders that were paid with a manual payment method
  • Orders that started as a draft and were then marked as paid
  • Orders that were imported through the Shopify API
  • Test orders

In case you did make the test orders with the help of testing payment gateway or testing mode, let’s look at the simple steps below:

Step 1: Click on the … button

If you find your orders are under the four criteria above, you can totally delete them.

Firstly, you should go to the Orders page and click on the “…” button, which is in the top right-hand side of the section.

Step 2: Click “Cancel order”

For those who do not know, in order to delete an order, you need to cancel it first. Therefore, after opening the “…” section on the Orders page, you can click on “Cancel Order.” The order you choose to delete now has been canceled.

Step 3: Click “Delete this order”

Finally, it’s time to get rid of those test orders. You should scroll down to the very bottom of the order after it has been canceled. Here you will see a red button that says “Delete this order”. What’s left is clicking this button to kick the orders you chose out of the Orders page.

When the test orders are deleted, they will automatically remove any record of them from your admin as well as order history.

So, what if a customer sends an email or texts you to request to have their information removed and deleted from your Shopify store? The answer is that you still can do so with an attempt to comply with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). You then can follow the steps below if they reach out to you with this order:

  • Going into your clients’ Customer Profile: To fulfill this step, you have two simple ways. The first one is going into your Customers section of your admin and search for their name from the search bar to pull up their profiles. The second way is via the order. You can access their profile by clicking on their customer name in the order which stays on the right hand side. This way is also applied for an abandoned checkout order.

  • Going into the Customer privacy: After you access your clients’ Customer Profile, you should scroll down until seeing the Customer privacy section that stays on the right hand side. Here you are able to send a copy of all of the information of your customers that is stored in your Shopify shop to them. Moreover, you are allowed to delete their personal information from your store completely, which means you won’t see it existing in your shop anymore.

  • Deleting personal data: This step is taken only when your customers request you to delete their data. You can do it by clicking on the Remove personal data button.

You still can remove your customer's data to comply with the GDPR
You still can remove your customer's data to comply with the GDPR

Because you are likely to remove any record of your test order from your Shopify admin and your order history, you should archive the order orders to protect them from being deleted completely. In order to archive these orders, let’s choose them among different orders on the Orders page by clicking the boxes beside the orders to select the one you want to save. Then, click on the Actions button and continue clicking the Archive button to finish the process. By doing so, there will be no notifications of them on the Orders view in your sidebar on your Admin page. Also, this will display the orders greyed out beside your active orders.

Conclusion

To sum up, as long as your orders are found under the four criteria we mentioned above, you can totally delete it from your Shopify store with some basic steps.

Hopefully, this post has given you a step-by-step guide to help you remove test orders from Shopify as well as provided you some related information. If we miss something or you have any questions, do not hesitate to leave us a comment. Share the post with your friends if you find it interesting and visit our site for more.

Thank you!


Sam Nguyen is the CEO and founder of Avada Commerce, an e-commerce solution provider headquartered in Singapore. He is an expert on the Shopify e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Sam loves talking about e-commerce and he aims to help over a million online businesses grow and thrive.