NOTE: This article assumes that you have already linked your ShareASale account to Zapier. If you have not completed this step, please follow the instructions here.
Perhaps the most useful of the ShareASale Zapier app’s features is the ability to automatically void orders that you have refunded. If a customer cancels their order, you obviously wouldn’t want to pay out a commission on that sale. Manually reviewing your orders every month can be tedious and time-consuming, but the Zapier app makes this easy and fast. Here’s an example order that tracked in our test account.
This order has been fully refunded, so let’s take a look at how to automatically void this with Zapier. The example in this tutorial uses Shopify as the e-commerce platform, but similar concepts will hold true for other e-commerce platforms provided that they have a Zapier app of their own. In Zapier, go to Make a Zap. In the When this happens box, find your e-commerce platform for Choose App & Event. For Shopify, you’ll want to select Updated Order under Choose an Event.
Click Continue. Zapier will then ask you to connect your Shopify (or other platform) account. For the Shopify example, you’ll want to choose Refunded from the Payment Status list. You can leave the other options as-is. This will trigger the ShareASale VOID only if you have refunded the order. You could alternatively set the Order Status field to Cancelled if you would rather handle reconciliations when they receive this status.
Again, press Continue. Zapier will then ask to test the trigger. It will look for an order with the status as Refunded. Zapier will get your most recent order that was refunded, so you’ll want to make sure that this was an order that ALSO tracked in ShareASale. The easiest way to do this would be to place a test order and refund it in your Shopify admin. You’ll notice that the order_number in the screenshot below matches the order number from the screenshot at the top of this page.
Continue to the next step. You’ll now select ShareASale in the Do this… section. In Choose an Event, select Void Transaction. Choose your ShareASale account on the next step. You’ll now need to map the data that was retrieved in from Shopify. For Order ID, click into the search box and search for Order Number.
IMPORTANT! Make sure the data here is formatted exactly the way it is in your ShareASale account. So in our example, we tracked 1011 as the Order ID. You cannot set up a zap to include any extra characters. In Shopify, for example, they provide a Name field that is formatted with a “#” sign. Choosing this option would not work, as it would tell ShareASale to void Order ID #1011 instead of Order ID 1011.
Next, choose the date that the sale was made in the Transaction Date field. For Shopify, this is labeled Created At. You can then manually type any Void Reason that you would like. You can optionally leave this field blank, but for our example we’ll write “Order was refunded”.
You can now move forward to test your Zap! After clicking Continue, select Test and Review. Zapier will get the order information from Shopify and attempt to VOID the transaction in ShareASale. Regardless of whether or not the transaction was found, Zapier will say Test was successful! If the order was found and voided successfully, you’ll see Transaction Voided in the data. If the refunded sale that Zapier pulled from Shopify was not tracked in ShareASale, the content field will say Transaction Not Found. If you set up your Zapier settings exactly as above, this is OK and you can move forward with activating the Zap. However, we suggest testing this setup on a refunded order that was also tracked in ShareASale.
Now if we refresh our ShareASale Transaction Detail Report, order 1011 should be VOIDED.
The order has been voided! After turning on and activating the Zap, your refunded orders will now automatically void!
There’s still one more important step! We’ve covered VOIDING orders that were fully refunded, but what about partial refunds? In this situation, instead of voiding the order completely, you will need to EDIT the transaction in ShareASale to reflect the new sale amount. Since this is a differed flag in Shopify as well as a different action in ShareASale, you’ll need to create a second Zap in order to handle these. So go back through and create a NEW Zap with the same settings until you reach the Customize Order step in Zapier. Unfortunately, Shopify has not made Partially Refunded available as an option for the Payment Status. This option is available if you are using BigCommerce, and may be available in other e-commerce platforms. However, if yours does not, you can follow the guidelines below for adding a filter like we will for Shopify.
Leave Payment Status, Order Status, and Fulfillment Status set to Any.
Click Continue to test the trigger. After the data has been retrieved from Shopify, click the PLUS SIGN below the box instead of Continue. This will add a Filter to the Zap. We will set this to continue ONLY if the sale data meets certain conditions. You can see this at the bottom of the screenshot below highlighted in RED.
In the Helpers section in the box that appears, select Filter. Set this to Only continue if Financial Status exactly matches partially_refunded.
Shopify does not make the new order total available, so we’ll need a second helper. Click the PLUS sign again below the filter, and this time choose Formatter. In the list that appears, choose Numbers.
On the next screen, under Transform choose Perform Math Operation. For Operation, choose Subtract. For the Input, from Shopify choose Subtotal in the first box and in the second, choose Refunds Refund Line Items Subtotal.
Click Continue and then Test & Review. The output should show you what the new total will be in ShareASale. Click Done Editing to move forward. Now in the Do this section for ShareASale, click Edit Transaction and continue through until you get to Customize Edit. Just as you did with the VOID, choose Order Number and Created At. For the New Sale Total, click Numbers and choose Output.
Click continue to move forward with testing. Below is how our test transaction looks before sending the Test Edit.
After clicking Test & Review, and we get the message that the test was successful, we can see the order has been updated in ShareASale’s Transaction Details Report.
You can now turn on the Zap! If you followed the instructions above, your orders should now automatically void and edit whenever items are refunded. It’s still a best practice to do a monthly payment review, but having this active should make reconciliations much less of a hassle. If you have any questions on this article, feel free to send in a support ticket or email us at shareasale@shareasale.com