Remind Buyers About Unpaid Bank Transfer Orders, Then Cancel

Bank transfer, Vorkasse, “pay by bank deposit”: in many European markets a share of buyers prefer to pay this way, so offering it makes sense. The cost shows up later. In Shopify, an order paid with a manual payment method stays Payment pending until you mark it as paid, and its items stay reserved the whole time. Some buyers pay the next day. Some need a nudge. Some never pay, and their order keeps stock away from buyers who would.

Most shops handle this with a spreadsheet or a weekly look through the Orders list. This guide shows how to put the whole routine on a timer with the Unpaid orders page in Payora: reminders on the days you choose, an optional cancellation that puts the stock back, and a log of everything it did. Unpaid orders is part of Payora’s Pro plan.

What the routine looks like

A typical setup for bank transfer orders:

• Day 3: a friendly reminder, with your bank details and the order number as payment reference.
• Day 6: a second reminder.
• Day 10: the order is cancelled, the items are restocked and the buyer gets Shopify’s cancellation email.

You choose the days. The app does the counting, every hour.

Step 1: Tell the app which orders to handle

Open Unpaid orders in Payora: Hide Payment Methods. Under Orders handled, fill in Payment method names: the names of your manual payment methods exactly as they appear on the order, separated by commas, for example Bank Deposit, Vorkasse. Letter case does not matter.

Not sure what the names look like on your orders? Click Preview next run. It shows the payment names on your unpaid orders, so you can copy them rather than guess.

Only orders with one of these payment names are ever handled. A shop that also uses Cash on Delivery can leave COD out of the list, and those orders are left alone.

Step 2: Set the reminders

Under Reminders, enter the Reminder days: days after the order was placed, separated by commas, such as 3, 6. You can set up to three. Leave the field empty if you only want the cancellation.

Keep Email the buyer Shopify’s order invoice on to email the buyer with each reminder. The email uses your Order invoice template from Shopify Settings > Notifications, so it already looks like the rest of your store’s emails. Add an optional Message in the email, and use it for what the buyer actually needs to pay:

• your account holder, IBAN and BIC,
• the order number as the payment reference,
• what happens if the order stays unpaid (“Unpaid orders are cancelled after 10 days”).

That last line matters. A buyer who knows the deadline is more likely to pay before it, and less surprised when a cancellation email arrives.

Step 3: Decide on the cancellation

Under Auto-cancel, switch on Cancel orders that stay unpaid and enter the days in Cancel after. It must be later than the last reminder. Then choose:

• Restock the items: usually yes, since releasing stock is the point.
• Send the buyer Shopify’s cancellation email: usually yes, so the buyer knows the order is closed.

When the day comes, the order is cancelled with the reason “Other” and a staff note that says it was unpaid, so your team can see why later.

You can also leave auto-cancel off and use the app only for reminders.

Step 4: Switch it on

Switch on Handle unpaid orders and click Save in the save bar.

Two things can happen on that first save:

• Adding tags, sending invoices and cancelling orders need permission to edit orders. Shopify shows a permission dialog the first time. The settings are saved once you allow it; if you decline, nothing is saved.
• If your settings would cancel orders on the very next run, for example old unpaid orders already past the Cancel after day, the app tells you how many and asks you to confirm. Check that number before you accept it.

What the app does every hour

While the switch is on, the app checks your open orders of the last 60 days with payment pending, once an hour. The rules it follows are designed so it never does the wrong thing to an order:

• Paid, partially paid, refunded and cancelled orders are never touched.
• Fulfilled or partly fulfilled orders are never cancelled. They show as skipped in the activity, because an order that has shipped needs a person, not a rule.
• Each order is read again right before an action. An order you marked as paid a minute ago is left alone.
• Each reminder and the cancellation run once per order. If an order is already older than several reminder days when you switch the feature on, only the latest due reminder is sent, so a buyer never gets two reminders at once.

Each reminder also adds a tag to the order: unpaid-reminder-1, unpaid-reminder-2 or unpaid-reminder-3. That makes the stage of every unpaid order visible in your Shopify Orders list without opening the app.

Keep some orders out

Some unpaid orders should wait: a trade customer on agreed payment terms, or a buyer who called to say the transfer is on its way. Add the tag no-auto-cancel to that order and it gets no reminder and is never cancelled. The tag is the first entry in Skip orders with these tags, and you can add your own, such as a tag you already use for wholesale customers.

Check what happened

The Activity section lists the latest reminders and cancellations with their result: Email sent, Tagged (reminder tag added, no email), Cancelled, Skipped or Failed with Shopify’s message. Click an order to open it in your admin. Entries are kept for 90 days.

Look at Activity after the first day or two. If you see Failed, Shopify’s message tells you why. If you see orders you did not expect, check the payment names from Step 1.

Prefer your own email? Use Shopify Flow

If you would rather send reminders from your email marketing tool, switch off Email the buyer Shopify’s order invoice. The app still adds the reminder tags on the right days, and Shopify Flow can react to them:

1. In Shopify Flow, create a workflow with the trigger Order tags added.
2. Add a condition: Tags added includes unpaid-reminder-1.
3. Add an action: an internal email to your team, or a message from your email app.

What is stored

For each reminder or cancellation, the app’s server keeps the order ID, the order number, the step and its result. It does not store the buyer’s name, email or address. Entries are deleted after 90 days.

The result

Manual payment methods stay on offer for buyers who want them, and the orders that never get paid stop holding your stock. The Payora app page also covers the checkout side: rules that hide or show payment methods by order total, customer tag or order history.