Cancelling an order
You need: Hub — cancel. Typically
hub_manageronly — deliberately not given tohub_operator.
Cancelling stops an order entirely. It is one of the two critical Hub actions, alongside Forcing a delivery.
Before you cancel
| Check | Why |
|---|---|
| Is cancelling actually what's wanted? | If the order is just going to be late, changing the promised time may serve the customer better — see Changing the promised time |
| Has the customer been told? | A cancellation they learn about from a missing dinner is a different conversation from one they agreed to |
| Is the order already out for delivery? | If the driver has left with it, cancelling here does not recall them |
| Do you know the reason? | It is required, and it is what anyone reviewing this later will read |
Cancelling
- Open the order.
- Choose cancel.
- Enter the cancellation reason — required, and worth writing properly.
- Confirm.
If the order is with a carrier
When an external carrier holds the order, the cancellation covers both sides together: the order is cancelled with the carrier and released on your side as one operation, not two.
This matters because the failure mode it prevents is a nasty one. Cancelling only your side would leave the carrier still holding a live order, with a courier on the way to collect something nobody expects them to collect.
If the carrier side fails, the cancellation does not silently half-apply. Check the order's state afterwards rather than assuming it went through, and retry rather than cancelling again from a different screen.
Write a real reason
The reason is the only explanation that survives. It is read by whoever handles the customer's follow-up, and by anyone reviewing cancellation rates for that store.
Useful: "Customer called to cancel — ordered twice by mistake, ticket 4471 kept." Not useful: "cancel", "error", "customer".
Also log an incident
Cancelling records that the order stopped, with your reason. It does not categorise the cancellation into anything countable.
If the cancellation came from something that went wrong — rather than a customer simply changing their mind — log an incident as well, so it shows up in the counts. See Logging an incident.
What cancelling does not do
- It does not recall a driver already out with the order.
- It does not issue a refund. That is handled wherever your refunds are handled.
- It does not notify the customer automatically. Assume they need to be told.