How to Merge Orders

Overview

Order Desk can merge two or more orders together to make shipping an easier and more affordable process for you or your fulfillment service.

This guide explains how to merge orders, how and why it's important to archive the originals, and other necessary info if you plan to merge your orders together in Order Desk.

Manually Merging Orders

Two or more orders can be merged together manually by selecting the orders and clicking on the Merge Checked Orders button at the bottom of each folder page.

A new order will be created with the item and checkout data details from the original orders, and the newly created order will have the same order number as the most recent of the merged orders with a -M added as the suffix:

If the merged orders do not have the same shipping name and address, the name and address on the most recent order will be used for the newly created merged order. 

Please be careful when manually merging orders so as not to accidentally merge two or more orders for separate customers together.

If you mistakenly merge orders together, the original orders will still exist and the newly created merged order can be deleted. If you have your store set up to automatically archive the original orders after they've been merged into a new order, you will have to go pull those orders out of the folder they've been sent to and make sure they are processed according to your normal workflow.

Merging Orders with Rules

If you prefer to automate this process, Order Desk can be set up to merge orders with a rule. When merging with a rule, orders will only be combined if the shipping name, company and address line 1 are the same in each of the orders.

To merge orders with a rule, this should be done by setting up a custom event to run every 30 to 60 minutes or longer, depending on how often you want Order Desk to poll your orders and look for any that could be merged. Keep in mind that enough time needs to be given for new orders from the same person to be placed, hence needing a longer time between appointments for this custom event.

To set up a custom event, follow the instructions in this guide.

Once the custom event has been created, create a rule for the Order Rule type for the event Merge Orders:

Archiving the Original Orders

The original orders will still exist after being merged into a new order so it's best to archive the originals to prevent them from being fulfilled more than once.

To archive the original orders, you can either manually move them into a different folder, such as Canceled or Archived, by selecting the orders and clicking on the folder name where you want them moved:

Or, to automate this process, create a rule that uses the  Order Merged Into Another Order event and Change Folder as the action:

Choose the folder where you want your archived orders to go, such as Canceled. For more information on folders, see the Working with Folders guide.

Do not delete the original orders if you need to maintain the link back to the shopping cart they came from. They must exist for Order Desk to pass the shipment and tracking information back to the original cart.

Shipment Details

When shipment and tracking details are added to a merged order, they will be copied back to the original orders and sent back to the shopping cart they came from as long as your store and cart integrations are set up for this.