How to Send a Replacement Order on Shopify

A customer writes that the parcel never arrived, arrived broken or held the wrong item, and you decide to send another one. Shopify's route for that is to duplicate the original order, or build a new draft order, and complete it without charging the customer again. None of the Shopify Help Center order, fulfillment and returns pages we read in November 2026 describes a separate Replacement or Reship button on the order page.

The clicks are few. What makes them worth a guide is everything around them: which way of making the draft free keeps your sales report honest, which email the customer gets, where the stock goes, and what to settle first when the parcel was lost, came from a print-on-demand app or is disputed. The table below sends you to your part, and the checklist in the middle holds the whole routine.

Which Replacement Path Fits What Happened?

Find the row that matches the message you received. One condition shapes several rows: Shopify creates returns, and so exchanges, only for fulfilled items that haven't been refunded, so a parcel lost before it was marked fulfilled takes the duplicate route whatever the customer would prefer.

Start From the Original Order

The Shopify Help Center pages we read in November 2026 don't call this a replacement order; Shopify describes the move on its page about shipping labels that can't be voided, for an order that is already fully fulfilled:

The same page then gives four steps:

1. Duplicate the original or create a new draft with the customer's details and the items to reship.
2. If you received payment on the original, mark the new draft as paid so the customer isn't charged again, which turns the draft into an order.
3. Buy the label from the new order.
4. Optionally, add the new tracking number to the original order so it shows the updated tracking.

Those steps never touch the price, and Shopify's mark-as-paid instructions are written for an order whose payment you have already received. So most of this guide is about the step in between: making the replacement free before you complete it. Start with the copy:

1. From Orders, open the original order.
2. Click Duplicate. If it isn't among the buttons at the top of the order page, open More actions.
3. In the Shopify mobile app, tap the ··· menu on the order, then Duplicate.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Orders
2. Order details
3. More actions

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What Duplicate Copies and What It Leaves Out

The copy starts from each product as it is today rather than as it was sold, according to Shopify's list of what a duplicate carries over. Check every line before you go further.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Orders
2. Drafts
3. Draft order

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When to Build a New Draft Instead

Start a blank draft from Orders > Drafts > Create order when Duplicate can't give you the right start: the original contains a subscription, the product has been removed, or you're sending something different altogether. A draft that contains a subscription can't be completed with Mark as paid yet: Shopify says that support is coming soon, and until then the customer pays at checkout through an invoice or a checkout link. You add the customer and the replacement item by hand, then follow the same steps below. Everything else drafts can do, from invoices to payment terms, is in our guide to Shopify draft orders.

Make the Replacement Free Before You Complete It

A replacement normally costs the customer nothing, and the draft has to say so before it becomes an order. Three ways get you there, and the customer sees each one differently:

Shopify's replacement steps go straight from duplicating to marking the draft as paid, which is the third way. Which of the three keeps your sales report honest is the one thing those pages don't spell out, so we made one replacement each way and read the report: see our test before you pick.

Shopify Academy's walkthrough of draft orders shows the same screens, with duplicating an order at 0:54 and discounts at 3:17. It was published in October 2022 and the admin has changed since, so the steps on this page follow today's Help Center.

Set the 100% Discount or a $0 Unit Price

These are the desktop steps from Shopify's draft order discount page, applied to a replacement:

1. In the draft's Payment section, click Add discount.
2. Check Add custom order discount and set it as a percentage of the listed price: 100.
3. In Reason for discount, write something like “Replacement for order” plus the original number. Shopify says this note is visible to your customers.
4. Click Done.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Orders
2. Drafts
3. Add discount

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For the second way, click the line item's price, click the edit icon beside Unit price, enter 0.00 and click Done. Shopify's custom price instructions say the price applies only to that line on this draft, so the product's own price isn't changed; a subscription product can't take a custom price.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Orders
2. Drafts
3. Line item price

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Shipping and Tax on a Free Replacement

Click Add shipping or delivery, choose the custom option, enter the rate's name and price, and confirm, as in Shopify's draft shipping steps. In our test admin on November 10, 2026, the option read Custom shipping and the confirm button Done, which stayed inactive until the price had a value. Shopify's steps also cover Local delivery and Pickup in store for a replacement that goes out that way; our test dialog showed only Shipping rates and Custom shipping.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Orders
2. Drafts
3. Add shipping or delivery

Zoom

Draft orders include tax by default, worked out from your store's tax settings and the customer's shipping address, or the billing address when there is no shipping address. To change that for one draft, click Estimated tax in the Payment section and select or deselect Charge taxes, as Shopify's draft tax steps describe. Whether a free replacement owes tax depends on your own obligations, so read that line before you complete the draft.

Complete the Draft Without Charging Anyone

Completion follows Shopify's steps for marking a draft as paid:

1. Open the draft from Orders > Drafts.
2. In the Payment section, click Collect payment, then Mark as paid.
3. Click Create order.
4. If a warning lists checkout rules or overselling settings the draft doesn't meet, click Cancel to fix the draft or Ignore and create order to go ahead.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Orders
2. Drafts
3. Collect payment

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In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Orders
2. Drafts
3. Mark as paid

Zoom

If the draft will wait before you complete it, reserve its stock: Shopify's reserve inventory option puts the units in the Committed state, where other customers can't buy them, while unreserved units stay Available and can sell out under you. Once the draft becomes an order, its unfulfilled units are Committed anyway.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Orders
2. Order details

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From here the replacement ships like any order. Buy the label from this new order, as Shopify's replacement steps say, or hand it to your fulfillment service as described in the section on 3PLs below.

What the Customer Receives

Shopify states that when you mark an order as paid, the customer receives an order confirmation email. Its customer notifications page lists the emails you can deactivate while performing an action: order canceled, order refund, shipping confirmation, shipping update, out for delivery and delivered. Order confirmation isn't on that list.

Customers who use the Shop app can also get its tracking and order status notifications, which Shopify says merchants can't deactivate.

The contact details decide whether the confirmation goes at all: Shopify's draft invoice considerations say that without an email address or phone number on the draft, the order confirmation isn't sent and can't be sent after the draft is completed. Leaving them off also leaves the customer without shipping emails for the replacement, so keep them and shape the message instead.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Orders
2. Order details
3. Timeline

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Shaping it starts with the discount reason, which the customer can see. On Shopify Plus, the store owner can also ask Shopify Support to turn off specific email and SMS notifications in the store. Stores that send replacements often can go further in the order confirmation template, which can read the order's tags, though Shopify's email variables page warns that tags applied by apps or platform features might not be available when the email is generated.

When the replacement ships, Shopify's replacement steps suggest adding the new tracking number to the original order as well. In the original order's Fulfilled section, click Add tracking and enter the number; Shopify's tracking steps let you deselect Send a notification to the customer if they shouldn't get a shipping update about the old order, an option our test admin showed as a Notify customer switch as of November 9, 2026.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Orders
2. Order details
3. Add tracking

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What a Replacement Does to Sales and Stock

Two records change when a replacement goes out: the sales report, which counts it, and inventory, which sets its units aside. Both follow from definitions Shopify publishes.

Does a Replacement Count as a Sale?

Shopify says its sales reports include sales and reversals from open, archived, pending and canceled orders, as well as draft orders that have been converted into orders. In the same report, gross sales equal product price times quantity before taxes, shipping, discounts and sales reversals; discounts are line item discounts plus the order-level share; and net sales are gross sales minus discounts minus sales reversals.

By those definitions, the way you make the replacement free decides which lines move: a discount is subtracted on its own line, while a full price marked as paid leaves nothing to subtract. For sales that started as draft orders, the Sales channel column of the Total sales by sales channel report shows Draft Orders, alongside every other draft you complete, so a replacement tag is what tells replacements apart. What the report printed for each way is in our test.

Where the Stock Goes

Shopify's inventory states follow the replacement through four moments:

The restock choice sits in Shopify's return processing steps, and the Damaged state in its page on adjusting unavailable inventory. Moving units in and out of those states is covered in what Shopify's unavailable inventory states do.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Products
2. Inventory

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Build Your Replacement Plan

The table at the top answers by what happened. This quiz answers by combination: who ships the product, how the first parcel went out and whether the customer has disputed the payment, which together decide what you file, whom you ask first and what you hold back. Four questions give you a three-step plan.

Replacement Order Checklist

This list is the duplicate route. If the quiz sent you to an exchange or to your print-on-demand provider, use those sections instead. Steps one and two decide whether you start at all, and steps five and eight are the ones that keep the customer from paying twice: five makes the draft free and eight completes it with Mark as paid.

When an Exchange Beats a Replacement Order

An exchange keeps the swap on one order instead of opening a second. Click Return on the original order and add the new item under Exchange items; Shopify works out whether a refund is due or payment needs collecting, and for an even exchange the money paid for the returned items covers the new ones. Shopify's returns and exchanges page sets the limits:

• Only fulfilled items that haven't been refunded can be returned, and so exchanged.
• Custom items can't be exchange items.
• Order-level discounts can't apply to exchange items, but a product discount can.
• Orders with duties can take a return but not exchange items.
• Exchange items aren't reserved until you process the return, and after that they still need to be fulfilled.
• Native Shopify bundles can't be used in exchanges, even for an identical bundle.

Shopify's changelog entry dated February 28, 2024 says exchanges for online orders were released to all merchants, and that Plus merchants get access through a feature test drive. The returns page, read on November 9, 2026, still says merchants on Shopify Plus can activate exchanges through the feature test drive.

To see whether your store has exchanges, open Return on a fulfilled order in your own admin and look for an Exchange items section. We checked our development store the same way, in our test.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Orders
2. Order details
3. Return

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Whether a customer can ask for the exchange on their own, and what a returns app adds, is covered in how exchange requests reach you.

Replacing an In-Store Sale

For a sale made at your counter, Shopify's POS exchange page says that on the POS Pro subscription you can exchange a returned item for a new item, and that a bundle has to be exchanged item by item, even when the items are identical. Shopify adds that exchanges can't be processed at retail locations in Sweden, where you process a return and sell the replacement as a new sale. The counter steps are in how to exchange an item on Shopify POS; to ship a replacement instead, duplicate the order in your admin as above.

Before You Reship a Lost or Damaged Parcel

The claim is about the parcel that went missing and the replacement is a new order, so the two run side by side. For shipments with Shopify labels that have carrier coverage or shipping insurance, Shopify's shipping claims page says the process starts in your Shopify admin, and the route depends on how the parcel shipped:

Insurance changes the route only if the label carried it. For orders shipped from the United States on labels bought in Shopify, Shopify's shipping insurance page gives up to $200 of coverage included on each eligible label for stores on Grow, Advanced or Plus with Shopify Payments, and up to $5,000 of coverage you can buy. USPS First Class Mail isn't eligible for that insurance.

USPS claims through Shopify go to USPS online within 7 to 60 days of shipping.

The first label itself may still be worth something: when it can't be voided, Shopify says refund or credit eligibility depends on the carrier service and the label's status. Carrier by carrier, the routes are laid out in who you file a Shopify shipping claim with.

When a 3PL or Print-on-Demand App Ships It

A fulfillment service app sees the replacement as a new order. Shopify's app fulfillment page says that with automatic fulfillment, fulfillment is requested automatically when the order is paid, and Mark as paid is what makes the replacement paid. Without automatic fulfillment, click Request fulfillment on the replacement yourself.

A custom fulfillment service that works by email receives the order and customer details when the order is marked as fulfilled, which happens on its own when the order is paid if you use automatic fulfillment.

Dropshipping and print-on-demand apps follow their own routines: Shopify says some dropshipping apps need you to order the customer's items inside the app and sends you to the app's developer for the workflow, while most print-on-demand apps mark items as fulfilled when the order ships. How each kind of app fulfills is in our guide to dropshipping and print-on-demand fulfillment. Check the provider's terms before you duplicate anything in Shopify, because a free reprint is theirs to give:

Replacement, Refund or Both When the Customer Disputes

A customer who says the parcel never came may also have gone to their bank. Shopify's chargeback resolution page sets two rules that shape the replacement decision. On Shopify Payments, at the inquiry stage a partial refund still leaves the door open to a full chargeback, while a full refund means the cardholder can't initiate a chargeback. Once a chargeback is open on Shopify Payments, you can't issue a refund unless the cardholder drops it first.

For a “product not received” dispute on Shopify Payments, Shopify's automatic evidence includes the shipping date, carrier and tracking number for each fulfillment of the disputed order, plus any refunds you issued for it. A replacement ships on a separate order, so its own fulfillment isn't part of the disputed order. Shopify's evidence list doesn't say whether a tracking number you add to the original order's fulfillment later, after the dispute opens or as a second number, makes it into your response, so check the response before you submit it.

Adding the new tracking number to the original order, Shopify's optional fourth replacement step, at least puts it on the order the dispute is about. Which evidence answers each chargeback reason is set out in what evidence answers each chargeback reason.

Automating Replacements With Shopify Flow

Shopify says the Order created trigger starts a workflow when a customer places an order or when a draft order is marked as paid and converted to an order. A replacement completed with Mark as paid therefore runs every workflow built on that trigger, including ones written with ordinary sales in mind, so a condition on your replacement tag keeps them from acting on it.

The draft order triggers act on drafts: Shopify says workflows that use them don't affect orders, though tags that the Add draft order tags action puts on a draft become order tags once the draft is converted. For building and testing workflows in general, see our Shopify Flow workflows guide.

Our own test· November 9, 2026

What Our Test Store Showed

Key takeaway

On November 9, 2026, we duplicated one fulfilled, paid order three times in a Shopify development store with the admin in English: one $5.00 item at a custom fulfillment service, and a test customer with an email address. Each copy was made free a different way, completed with Mark as paid, and read in Analytics > Reports > Total sales by order, which showed the orders within minutes.

Three replacements in one sales report, November 9, 2026

Way we made the replacement free	Gross sales	Discounts	Net sales	Total sales	What it means for you
100% custom order discount	$5.00	−$5.00	$0.00	$0.00	Replacements show as discounts, and the customer reads your reason
Unit price set to $0	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	Replacements stay out of gross sales and discounts; find them by tag
Full price, then Mark as paid	$5.00	$0.00	$5.00	$5.00	Reports money you never received; avoid it

Source: Total sales by order report in our development store, November 9, 2026; one $5.00 test item, no tax on the original order.

The full-price way added $5.00 to net sales and total sales for an item nobody paid for again. The discount way kept the trace of a replacement, the item's price in gross sales cancelled by the same discount, and the $0 price left the replacement invisible in sales. Shopify's dialog for the full-price draft explains why: it asks you to confirm you received the money.

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Orders
2. Drafts
3. Mark as paid

Zoom

In Shopify adminOpen in your store

1. Analytics
2. Reports
3. Total sales by order

Zoom

The rest of the test answered the questions Shopify's pages leave open:

What else the test showed, November 9, 2026

What we did	What Shopify showed	What it means for you
Duplicated the fulfilled order	Duplicate was the first item under More actions; one click created and saved the draft, with no discount and no shipping	The draft exists as soon as you click, so delete it if you change your mind
Completed a draft with a $0.00 total	In Collect payment, Credit card was unavailable and Mark as paid opened a dialog: "This will create a free order. No payment is required." It had no email option and no amount field	A free replacement completes through Mark as paid, and the email can't be stopped there
Completed a full-price draft	The dialog read "Mark this order as paid if you received $5.00 from another payment method." with no field for another amount; the order showed Paid $5.00	This way records the full price as a sale you were never paid for
Read the confirmation email	Each order's timeline said the order confirmation was sent; the email for the 100% discount copy showed the discount reason "Replacement for #1044 (−$5.00)", "You saved $5.00" and a $0.00 total	Write the discount reason for the customer: it is printed in their email
Added a $0.00 custom shipping rate named Replacement shipping (re-checked November 10, 2026)	It was accepted; the draft's Payment summary showed "Replacement shipping" with $0.00 struck through and "Free"	The rate's name shows next to the free shipping on the draft, so name it after the replacement
Left the three replacements unfulfilled	Committed rose to 3 and On hand stayed at 9 for the item	A replacement holds stock without removing it until you fulfill
Completed a replacement for an item at our custom fulfillment service, without automatic fulfillment	The order waited with a Request fulfillment button; nothing went to the service on its own	Without automatic fulfillment, request the replacement yourself
Opened Add tracking on the original order	Notify customer was on by default	Turn it off if the customer shouldn't get an update about the old order
Opened Return on the original order	The screen was titled Return and exchange and had an Exchange items section	Our development store offered exchanges; check yours the same way

Source: our development store, November 9, 2026; the custom shipping row re-checked November 10, 2026.

The test didn't cover tax, because the original order carried none, nor fulfilling the replacements or restocking a returned item, and the confirmation email went to a test address, so we checked what Shopify sent rather than what arrived.

The Bottom Line

Shopify gives you the pieces of a replacement rather than a button: Duplicate, a discount or custom price, Mark as paid and a label from the new order. Put together in that order, they send the customer a new parcel without a second charge.

Frequently Asked Questions