Overview
The Order Editing timeline brings together recorded upsell, checkout, hold, payment capture, reversal, editing-window, cancellation, support, and edit activity for one Shopify order.
Use it to understand what happened and when. Shopify's native order timeline remains separate and provides Shopify-generated order, payment, and fulfilment entries.
Open the timeline
- Open an existing order in Shopify admin.
- Open More actions.
- Select View Editing Timeline.
The Upselling Timeline block on the order page also summarizes attributed upsell purchases and recorded outcomes. If the block is absent, add it to the order page.
Read the timeline
Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
Phase | The recorded placement, such as Checkout, Thank You page, or Order Status page, or an operational category such as Hold. |
Time (UTC) | When the event occurred, displayed in UTC. For grouped views, this is the first view in the group. |
What happened | The recorded outcome and available product, price, strategy, or reason. |
Repeated product views from the same placement and strategy within a minute appear together. For example, 25 products viewed replaces 25 individual product rows. Views from a later visit remain separate. Summary counts above the table count the underlying events, so they can exceed the number of table rows or distinct products.
Checkout activity appears when the order has an available checkout reference. Checkout completion, acceptance, and payment remain separate outcomes.
Understand the outcomes
Upsell and checkout
- Viewed means an offer was presented.
- Accepted means the customer chose an offer.
- Checkout completed marks recorded checkout completion. It does not establish that a later upsell was paid.
- Paid records a paid upsell.
- Declined records an offer decline.
- Product removed records a previously accepted upsell being removed.
- No offer shown means a matching attempt returned no eligible product.
Acceptance and payment are different stages. An accepted offer may still need payment or can later be removed. Missing acceptance rows do not prove that the customer never accepted an offer.
Hold and capture
Hold events explain whether an Order Editing or supported ShipHero hold was placed, skipped, released, or failed. Compare them with the order's current fulfilment status when investigating warehouse timing.
Capture events show whether an authorized payment capture succeeded, failed, or was not attempted. Check the Shopify payment timeline for the financial record and gateway messages.
Reversal and expiration
Reversal events record attempts to reverse unpaid order edits, including successes, skips, and failures. Confirm the final result using the order's products, balance, and Shopify timeline.
Expiration events record editing-window decisions: Editing reopened, Editing closed early, Editing expired, Inventory risk assessed, and Expiration reversal decision. A later rule, fulfilment update, capture, or staff action can change the order's current eligibility.
Cancellation, support, and edits
Cancellation events can show a request, retained order, completed cancellation, or failure. Review the cancellation case and current Shopify order state for the final result.
Support events indicate a condition requiring merchant support. Include the event detail and current order state when contacting support.
Edit events record Order Editing activity, such as a committed change or staff-edit marker. Shopify's native timeline remains the place to confirm Shopify-side changes and final order contents.
Understand availability and limits
Internal Order Editing events are available from July 2026 and retained for 120 days. Older events, Shopify-only activity, and unrecorded activity can be absent.
- Partial counts means older matching events exceed the fetch limit. Treat counts as minimums.
- Truncated means only the most recent timeline rows are shown. Repeated views are grouped before this limit is applied.
- A note about an unavailable checkout token means pre-order upsell activity is omitted.
- No live analytics events found for this order means no retained matching events were returned. It does not prove that the order never changed.
Investigate an order
- Start with the oldest visible relevant row and read forward.
- Compare Viewed, Accepted, Paid, and Product removed as different stages.
- Review hold, expiration, capture, and reversal events around the same time.
- Compare the results with Shopify's native timeline and current order contents.
- Convert Time (UTC) to your store or local time zone before comparing timestamps.
- Review the order's applied rule, address result, editing status, and upsell attribution in its Order Editing blocks.
Use an existing order with known activity to verify that its expected outcome and UTC time appear. Allow time for event processing before checking again. Partial or truncated results cannot establish a complete history.
Troubleshooting
The action is missing
Confirm the Order Editing admin action is installed for the store and that your staff account can view the order.
The timeline fails to load
Select Retry. If loading still fails, reopen the order and try again. Contact support through live chat in Order Editing with the store URL, order number, screenshot, and approximate event time.
The timeline is empty
Check retention, the availability of a checkout reference, and whether the activity was recorded by Order Editing rather than Shopify alone.
Counts differ from Analytics
The timeline covers one order and its retained history. Analytics can use different aggregation, date-range, and processing rules. A grouped row counts distinct products, while the summary counts recorded events. Partial or truncated labels also limit comparisons.
