Order Cancellation

Event Serialization

always

Business Use Case

1️⃣ Merchandising and Inventory Planning: when merchant-initiated cancellations with cancellation_reason = out_of_stock exceed 1% of a SKU's weekly orders, the planner raises the channel safety-stock buffer and escalates the inventory sync latency between the OMS and storefront. 2️⃣ Customer Service Operations lead: when customer-initiated cancellations within 60 minutes of order placement rise week over week, the team reviews the top cancellation_reason values (wrong item, delivery date, duplicate order) and updates order-confirmation messaging and the self-service order-edit window. 3️⃣ Performance Marketing: daily, the team uploads cancelled transaction_id values as conversion retractions or restatements to Google Ads and Meta so bidding algorithms optimise on net rather than gross orders. 4️⃣ Finance: in the daily revenue flash, the FP&A analyst subtracts Cancelled Revenue from gross demand and reconciles cancelled orders against payment voids and refunds, investigating any cancelled order with a captured payment that has no matching refund after 48 hours.

Business Criticality

High

Journey / Navigation Area

Monetization

Owning Function

Customer Service

Calculation Notes

1️⃣ Scope: record one GA4 refund event with refund_type = order_cancellation (Adobe order:cancel) per transaction_id when the whole order moves to a cancelled status before any fulfilment line has shipped; partial line-item cancellations and cancellations after shipment (returns to origin, refused deliveries) are excluded and belong to refund / return tracking; refund events without refund_type = order_cancellation are never counted. 2️⃣ Source of truth and deduplication: the OMS record (Shopify orders/cancelled webhook with cancelled_at, Salesforce Commerce Cloud order status CANCELLED) is authoritative; a client-side self-service confirmation and the server-side OMS hit for the same order are deduplicated on transaction_id, keeping the OMS timestamp and value and the client hit's cancel_initiator = customer. 3️⃣ Exclusions: remove test orders, draft orders, orders deleted without a cancel status, and payment authorisation failures that never produced a purchase; cancel-and-reissue edits handled by Customer Service (address change, item swap) are retained but flagged cancellation_reason = order_edit so they can be excluded from customer-intent and operational cancellation rates. 4️⃣ Timing: the event timestamp is the cancellation time, not the order time; period reporting of Orders Cancelled uses cancellation date, while Order Cancellation Rate is reported by order-placed cohort (cancellations joined back to purchase by transaction_id) so numerator and denominator refer to the same orders, with the latest cohort treated as immature until the standard pre-ship window (typically 7–14 days) has elapsed. 5️⃣ Value: value, tax, shipping and currency mirror the definitions used on the originating purchase event (same inclusion of tax and shipping, ISO 4217 currency, order-date FX rate for multi-currency reporting), less any partial refunds already issued, so Cancelled Revenue reconciles against gross purchase revenue. 6️⃣ Session handling: merchant and system cancellations arrive server-side without a browsing session and must not start or extend a session or be subject to the 30-minute session timeout; user-level and channel attribution are inherited from the originating purchase via transaction_id and the user_id / client_id stored at checkout. 7️⃣ Rate denominator: Order Cancellation Rate = Orders Cancelled / all orders placed in the period (distinct purchase transaction_id, including orders later cancelled, excluding test orders); merchant-side cancellations for stock rejection on ship-from-store or BOPIS orders are included with cancel_initiator = merchant and fulfillment_type set accordingly.

Data Mappings

{
  "event": [
    {
      "eventInfo": {
        "eventName": "order:cancel",
        "eventAction": "order:cancel",
        "type": "commerce",
        "effect": "order cancelled before shipment",
        "timeStamp": "2026-09-13T10:42:00Z"
      },
      "category": {
        "primaryCategory": "ecommerce"
      },
      "attributes": {
        "refund_type": "order_cancellation",
        "cancel_initiator": "customer",
        "cancellation_reason": "customer_changed_mind",
        "order_status_at_cancel": "awaiting_fulfillment",
        "fulfillment_type": "ship_to_home",
        "payment_type": "credit_card",
        "minutes_since_order": 38
      }
    }
  ],
  "transaction": {
    "transactionID": "ORD-100482",
    "total": {
      "currency": "USD",
      "tax": 8.99,
      "shipping": 5.99,
      "transactionTotal": 129.97
    },
    "item": [
      {
        "productInfo": {
          "productID": "SKU-24817",
          "productName": "Trail Running Shoe"
        },
        "category": {
          "primaryCategory": "Footwear"
        },
        "price": {
          "basePrice": 114.99,
          "currency": "USD"
        },
        "quantity": 1
      }
    ]
  }
}

{
  "event": "refund",
  "ecommerce": {
    "transaction_id": "ORD-100482",
    "value": 129.97,
    "currency": "USD",
    "tax": 8.99,
    "shipping": 5.99,
    "items": [
      {
        "item_id": "SKU-24817",
        "item_name": "Trail Running Shoe",
        "item_category": "Footwear",
        "price": 114.99,
        "quantity": 1
      }
    ]
  },
  "refund_type": "order_cancellation",
  "cancel_initiator": "customer",
  "cancellation_reason": "customer_changed_mind",
  "order_status_at_cancel": "awaiting_fulfillment",
  "fulfillment_type": "ship_to_home",
  "payment_type": "credit_card",
  "minutes_since_order": 38
}

{
  "event": "order:cancel",
  "eventInfo": {
    "eventName": "order:cancel"
  },
  "transaction": {
    "transaction_id": "ORD-100482",
    "value": 129.97,
    "currency": "USD",
    "tax": 8.99,
    "shipping": 5.99,
    "refund_type": "order_cancellation",
    "cancel_initiator": "customer",
    "cancellation_reason": "customer_changed_mind",
    "order_status_at_cancel": "awaiting_fulfillment",
    "fulfillment_type": "ship_to_home",
    "payment_type": "credit_card",
    "minutes_since_order": 38,
    "items": [
      {
        "item_id": "SKU-24817",
        "item_name": "Trail Running Shoe",
        "item_category": "Footwear",
        "price": 114.99,
        "quantity": 1
      }
    ]
  }
}

{
  "eventType": "commerce.backofficeOrderCancelled",
  "commerce": {
    "order": {
      "purchaseID": "transaction_id",
      "priceTotal": "value",
      "currencyCode": "currency",
      "taxAmount": "tax",
      "cancelDate": "event timestamp (cancellation time)",
      "payments": [
        {
          "paymentType": "payment_type",
          "currencyCode": "currency"
        }
      ]
    },
    "shipping": {
      "shippingAmount": "shipping"
    }
  },
  "productListItems": [
    {
      "SKU": "items[].item_id",
      "name": "items[].item_name",
      "productCategories": [
        {
          "categoryName": "items[].item_category"
        }
      ],
      "priceTotal": "items[].price * items[].quantity",
      "quantity": "items[].quantity"
    }
  ],
  "_tenant": {
    "orderCancellation": {
      "refundType": "refund_type",
      "cancelInitiator": "cancel_initiator",
      "cancellationReason": "cancellation_reason",
      "orderStatusAtCancel": "order_status_at_cancel",
      "fulfillmentType": "fulfillment_type",
      "minutesSinceOrder": "minutes_since_order"
    }
  },
  "_experience": {
    "analytics": {
      "customDimensions": {
        "eVars": {
          "eVar1": "transaction_id",
          "eVar2": "cancel_initiator",
          "eVar3": "cancellation_reason"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Source Data

Dependencies

Prerequisite: List the dependencies required for this Event

Report Attributes

Segment Eligibility

Governance

Dimensions

Derived Entities

GitHub

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