Ways To Archive or Hide Orders?

[maybmockingbird]

Hi, I need some help:

I have a MASSIVE a problem with my orders and I was wondering if there was a workaround, I'm open to trying anything, even submitting a help request if needed but. I'm an author and I was participating in one of those Stuff Your Kindle events today where you give out books for free or $.99. Usually, when these events happen I get 10-20 orders max. They're easy, fun, lowkey things and are typically helpful for marketing on a small scale like that. The one I signed up for and participated in today blew up on social media and I ended up with 175 downloads in less than twelve hours, and it's made my orders page an absolute mess. Having 175 orders that are 100% pointless, taking up space in the first several pages of my order list, is obnoxious. But I can't find a way to hide or archive them no matter what I do.

99% of these "customers" do not care about coming back or purchasing more items. They just want a freebie. They put fake information in their details, junk emails, false addresses made up of 0s, and opt out of my newsletter and emails. It's usually fine when it's only a handful of people since it's good for marketing, but 175 people who want nothing to do with me or my books going forward has made my order page super cluttered with people that don't matter and I will never need to reference those orders ever again. I have active preorders that I can't get to easily now, the filter function for the order page sucks and half the time it pulls up orders that have already been fulfilled, and I don't want to scrub through a bunch of pointless orders every time I need to go find something. Is there a way I can hide or request for all of the orders for this specific day to be removed if they've already downloaded the book? I have it listed to one download only per order so they won't be able to access it again nor return it since I have a clear no refunds/return policy, and they didn't pay anything. I also don't need $865 in free merchandise haunting my order page until the end of time. I don't want to have to completely delete and remake my website to start from scratch if it's avoidable but I can't have my order page cluttered like this. Any help is appreciated!

[MayaP · Accepted solution]

Hey @maybmockingbird  - Thanks for the details! I totally understand why an archive or hide feature would be helpful for you. Unfortunately, there's no current setting or workaround for this right now. This would be a great feature request though.

I'd encourage you to submit it—our product team reviews all the feedback. Let me know if you need anything else!

[maybmockingbird]

Yeah so here's the problem, when I was Googling how to do this I came across posts on this community forum from as far back as 2019 asking for the same thing, and the same copy+paste response was given every time about feedback, so I have zero hope or trust that your team actually takes what people want or the feedback and integrates it. Maybe Square should stop trying to focus on useless things like AI no one wants and actually gives us helpful things like a simple order archive option.

Due to this I now have to completely remake my website from scratch on a new domain, shut down my store, re-open it, set up over fifty items again, get everything set up and formatted, change ALL of my marketing items like banners, business cards, etc., losing HOURS of work and income just so I can have a clean order slate. That is ridiculous and completely unnecessary and an excess of stress and lost resources for no reason when we should be able to control our order pages. At this point I may just shut down all of my sites and move to Square Space or something since they actually work properly.

[MayaP]

Everything you're saying is completely valid. I'd feel very frustrated too seeing the same feature requested for years without implementation, especially when other features are being rolled out. I completely get it.

I do want to be clear that as community moderators, we're not part of the product team. We do not have any pull on what features get pushed through. The only thing we can do is acknowledge your feedback and direct you to the feature request board so the right team hears this. I know that's not the answer you're looking for, and I understand your frustration with that process.

The last thing I want is for you to have to rebuild everything from scratch. I'm truly sorry for the inconvenience and lost time this is causing you. Your feedback about prioritization, especially the archive feature versus other updates, is important, and I hope you'll still consider submitting it formally so it gets in front of the product team.

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, even though you're frustrated. If you want to discuss anything else or just need to vent, I'm all ears!

@maybmockingbird