- Short answer
- You can cancel a transfer in Draft or Ready to ship status; for Ready to ship, committed items are then made Available at the origin location.
- Draft commits nothing
- Inventory in a Draft transfer isn't committed, so cancelling a Draft has nothing to make Available.
- In progress
- Not in Shopify's cancel list; no transfer page we read says in so many words whether it can be canceled.
- Undo
- No transfer page we read describes reopening a canceled transfer; you can access and duplicate it at any time.
- Purchase-order transfers
- Items canceled while receiving from a supplier are removed, not returned to a location.
- As of
- Help Center pages on inventory transfers, purchase-order transfers and inventory states, read September 23, 2026.
When can you cancel a Shopify inventory transfer?
The Help Center names two statuses: "You can cancel a transfer that is in Draft or Ready to ship status."
In progress isn't on that list, and no transfer page we read on September 23, 2026 says in so many words whether one can be canceled. What the Help Center does document for a transfer you're receiving is a per-item Cancel, covered below.
A Draft can also be deleted rather than canceled; see which Shopify inventory transfers you can delete.
What happens to the inventory when you cancel?
Ready to ship commits a transfer's inventory at the origin location, so after you cancel, your committed items are made Available at the origin location.
A Draft has nothing to release: the inventory in a draft transfer isn't committed.
Receiving has a separate, per-item Cancel for items never shipped from the origin location; between two of your locations, that inventory is returned to the origin location and made available there.
Can you undo a cancel, and what if a purchase order is linked?
No transfer page we read on September 23, 2026 describes a way to undo a cancel or reopen the transfer. What Shopify documents instead:
You can access and duplicate canceled transfers at any time.
On a transfer linked to a purchase order, the per-item Cancel at receiving works differently from the one between your own locations: because a purchase order's origin is a supplier, canceled inventory is removed instead of being returned to a location.
The Help Center's page on purchase-order transfers has no section on cancelling a whole transfer, and none of the pages we read says what a cancel does to the linked purchase order.
Check the purchase order itself before you tell the supplier anything; if the link is the problem, see what unlinking a purchase order does.
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