> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vortexiq.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Cancelled Orders Over Time, BigCommerce > Cancelled Orders Over Time for BigCommerce stores. Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre. How to read it, why it matters, and how to act on it. **Metrics type:** [Supporting Metrics](/nerve-centre/overview#metrics-types-explained) • **Category:** [Ecommerce Platform](/nerve-centre/connectors#connectors-by-type) ## At a glance > Daily count of BigCommerce orders cancelled over the rolling 90-day period, plotted as a time series. The trend view of [Cancellation Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/cancellation-rate), here you spot anomalies (a single bad day), patterns (Mondays being worse than other days), and trajectories (worsening over a month). The diagnostic side of cancellation analysis. | | | | ----------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **What it counts** | `COUNT(orders WHERE status = 'Cancelled')` aggregated daily over 90 days. The chart is an area / line plot; spikes and trends are the actionable shape. | | **VAT / tax treatment** | n/a (count metric). | | **Shipping** | n/a. | | **Discounts** | n/a. | | **Refunds** | Refunds are distinct from cancellations on BC; this card tracks cancellations only. | | **Cancelled / voided orders** | This card *is* the cancellation view. | | **Currency** | n/a (count metric, currency-agnostic). | | **Channels / sources** | All channels contribute by default. Marketplace cancellations dominate the chart for marketplace-heavy stores; toggle channel filter for cleaner per-channel patterns. | | **Spike interpretation** | A 1-day spike >2× the 30-day average is usually one of: (1) a fraud-rule deployment that mass-rejected legitimate orders; (2) an OOS event on a top SKU triggering bulk cancellations; (3) a marketplace platform issue (Amazon API down, eBay sync failure); (4) a duplicate-order bug from a checkout glitch. | | **Trend interpretation** | A rising 30-day rolling average suggests systemic decay: fraud-rule drift, sustained OOS events, supplier issues, or marketplace-relationship deterioration. Falling trend = improvements working. | | **Day-of-week pattern** | Cancellations sometimes peak Monday (weekend orders processed Monday morning, OOS-at-fulfilment surfaces) or after major sales (post-Black-Friday cancellation wave). | | **B2B Edition note** | B2B portal contributions to this chart should be near-zero; any visible B2B cancellation pattern warrants investigation. | | **Time window** | `90D` (longer window for trend visibility) | | **Alert trigger** | None on this card directly. | | **Roles** | owner, operations | ## Calculation Calculated automatically from your BigCommerce data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading. ## Worked example A US homewares brand on BigCommerce Pro, 90-day window 14 Feb 26 to 14 May 26. | Period (sample dates) | Daily cancellations (avg) | Notable spikes | Pattern | | --------------------- | ------------------------- | ------------------------------- | ----------------------------- | | 14 Feb - 28 Feb 26 | 8/day | Spike 18 Feb (32 cancellations) | Steady baseline, one bad day | | 1 Mar - 14 Mar 26 | 9/day | None | Stable | | 15 Mar - 31 Mar 26 | 14/day | Spike 22 Mar (47 cancellations) | **Rising trend, investigate** | | 1 Apr - 14 Apr 26 | 18/day | Sustained elevated | **Worsening systemic issue** | | 15 Apr - 30 Apr 26 | 11/day | Improvement after fix on 15 Apr | Recovery after intervention | | 1 May - 14 May 26 | 9/day | None | Returned to baseline | | **90D average** | **11/day** | | | What's interesting: 1. **The 18 Feb spike (32 cancellations vs 8 baseline) is a single-day anomaly.** Investigate that day's order log: was a fraud-rule deployed that morning? Did a top SKU go OOS? Did Channel Manager fail? The reason is on the order-log notes for each cancellation. Often a single root cause explains 90% of a spike. 2. **The 22 Mar spike (47 cancellations) preceded a sustained rise.** This is the warning sign: the spike was the leading edge of a systemic issue, not an isolated event. By the time April baseline was 18/day (2.25× normal), the merchant had been silently bleeding cancellations for 3 weeks. **A second 5-alarm event after a spike is when to act, not the spike itself.** 3. **The 15 Apr fix shows what intervention looks like.** Daily cancellations dropped from 18 to 11 within 2 weeks. The intervention (probably a fraud-rule audit, an inventory-sync repair, or a Channel Manager reconnect) clearly worked. Document what was changed for next time. 4. **The 90-day average of 11/day = \~330/quarter cancellations.** At an average order value of $90, that's ~$30k of pre-fulfilment lost revenue. Half is recoverable with intervention; the other half is unavoidable (genuine fraud, true OOS, customer changed mind). 5. **Day-of-week pattern not visible at this resolution** but typically Mondays show 30-50% above other weekdays (weekend orders processing Monday, OOS surfacing). Configure the card to show day-of-week breakdown for that view. Action priority order: 1. **Spike investigation playbook** when the chart shows a 2× day spike, drop everything: open the order log, identify the cancellation reasons, fix the root cause within 24 hours. 2. **Trend monitoring weekly** the 30-day rolling average crossing 1.5× the 90-day average is the "systemic issue is forming" signal. 3. **Document interventions** every time you fix a cancellation issue, log it against the chart timestamp; future investigations benefit. 4. **Per-channel monitoring** filter the chart to per-channel views; Amazon-only spike vs web-only spike have different root causes. 5. **Quarterly: review baseline** baseline cancellation rate may legitimately drift up as catalogue / channels grow; rebaseline expectations every quarter. ## Sibling cards merchants should reference together | Card | Why pair it with Cancelled Over Time | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | [Cancellation Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/cancellation-rate) | The percentage view; this card is the count over time. | | [Refunds Over Time](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/refunds-over-time) | The refund-trend cousin; cancellation + refund = total revenue-leakage trend. | | [Revenue Over Time](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/revenue-over-time) | The denominator context; cancellation spikes that don't dent revenue suggest sub-population concentration. | | [BC Decline Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/declined-transaction-rate) | Decline trend correlates with payment-failure cancellations. | | [Orders Over Time](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/orders-over-time) | Order creation trend; cancellations should track creation if rate is stable. | | [BC Channel Refund Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/refund-rate-by-channel) | Per-channel split; combined with this card's per-channel filter gives full per-channel story. | | [`shopify.cancellation_rate`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/cancellation-rate) | Cross-platform reference. | ## Reconciling against the vendor's own dashboard **Where to look in BigCommerce Control Panel:** [Orders → All orders](https://login.bigcommerce.com/deep-links/manage/orders) filter by status `Cancelled` and date range; the daily count is implicit in the timestamp distribution. There's no native daily-trend chart in BC for cancellations specifically; manual export to spreadsheet gives the same view. **Why our number may legitimately differ from BC:** | Reason | Direction | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ | | **Status mapping**. We use `Cancelled` only by default. Including `Declined` raises counts \~10-30% depending on fraud-rule strictness. | Configurable | | **Time-zone**. UTC default vs BC store time zone; daily buckets shift at midnight boundaries. | Configurable | | **Marketplace cancellation timing**. Channel Manager indexes Amazon cancellations on sync (may be hours after Amazon's cancel timestamp). | Vortex IQ may LAG Amazon Seller Central by hours | | **Channel coverage**. We include all channels by default; BC views may filter. | Different totals | | **Cancellation reason exclusions**. Some merchants exclude duplicate-order cancellations (operational hygiene rather than failure); configurable. | Configurable | **Cross-connector reconciliation:** | Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------ | | [`stripe.stripe_canceled_payment_intents_over_time`](/nerve-centre/stripe/stripe_canceled_payment_intents_over_time) | Stripe-side cancellations correlate with web-channel cancellations. | Stripe sees only Stripe-paid orders. | | [`amazon_sp.amazon_cancellations_over_time`](/nerve-centre/amazon_sp/amazon_cancellations_over_time) | Amazon channel slice should match Amazon SP-API. | Time-zone and sync-lag noise. | **The cancellation-trend view is BC-aligned with similar cards on Shopify and Adobe Commerce.** ***
Same-metric documentation cross-reference (for agencies running multiple platforms) * [`shopify.cancelled_over_time`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/cancelled-orders-over-time) (planned) * [`adobe_commerce.cancelled_over_time`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/adobe-commerce/cancelled-orders-over-time) (planned)
## Known limitations / merchant FAQs **A 1-day spike with no recurrence, ignore it?** **Investigate, then maybe ignore.** Single-day spikes often have identifiable causes (a fraud-rule deployment, a Channel Manager hiccup, a top-SKU OOS event) that are worth understanding even if isolated. Document the root cause; if the same cause recurs, you've already done the diagnosis. If it's truly random and unrepeated, move on. **My chart shows a Monday peak every week, why?** Weekend orders processed Monday morning. Weekend orders that hit OOS-at-fulfilment, fraud-rule rejection, or address-validation issues get cancelled when the warehouse / ops team comes in Monday. Common pattern; reduce by configuring weekend-time fraud-rule auto-approval and weekend-time OOS-at-checkout rather than at-fulfilment. **My cancellations climbed steadily over 30 days, what happened?** Likely systemic. Check: (1) was a fraud-rule tightened recently? (2) did inventory sync degrade (more OOS-at-fulfilment)? (3) did a marketplace integration credential start expiring (orders accepted then auto-cancelled when payment fails)? (4) did supplier lead-times lengthen, pushing more orders into "can't fulfil in advertised window" cancellation? Each has a different fix. **A cancellation spike preceded a revenue drop, related?** Almost certainly. Cancellations are a leading indicator: the order-creation flow worked but something downstream broke. Within 24-48 hours of a cancellation spike, revenue drops as the systemic issue persists. Watching this card lets you intervene before [BC Alert Revenue Drop](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/revenue-drop-alert) fires. **My Amazon-channel cancellations are climbing, where do I look?** Three places: (1) [Channel Manager → Activity log](https://login.bigcommerce.com/deep-links/manage/channel-manager) for sync errors; (2) Amazon Seller Central → Performance for marketplace-side issues (account health, listing suppression); (3) Channel Manager fulfilment-time settings (if Amazon expects 2-day ship and you can't deliver, cancellations cascade). Most Amazon cancellation lifts are integration-side. **Why is my B2B portal showing any cancellations?** B2B cancellations should be effectively zero. Any visible pattern means either: (1) credit-line failures (account hit limit); (2) account-manager training issues (orders being approved that shouldn't); (3) portal usability problems (B2B customers misordering). Time-sensitive issue; investigate immediately. **Should I export this chart for board reporting?** Yes for trend communication. Boards understand "cancellations rose from 8/day to 18/day, then we fixed it and they returned to 10/day" better than "our cancellation rate is currently 2.4%". The chart shows the management quality. **My 90-day average is high but trend is flat, healthy or unhealthy?** Flat-and-high means the underlying issue is structural (your channel mix has built-in cancellation, your fraud rules are appropriately strict, your marketplace cohort behaviour). Compare to similar-mix benchmarks; if structurally appropriate, accept. Flat-and-low is the gold standard. **Multi-currency: can I see cancellations per currency?** Yes, filter by currency. Pattern often differs: USD orders may have higher fraud-rule rejection (different fraud profile), EUR may have higher payment-timeout (3DS friction). Currency-specific patterns inform region-specific intervention. **Should I notify customers proactively when their order is cancelled?** Yes always, ideally with reason. "Your order #1234 was cancelled because the item went out of stock; here's a 10% off code for your next order" recovers a meaningful share of customers. Silent cancellation is the worst experience; explicit communication preserves goodwill. **What's the relationship between this card and refund trends?** Cancellation precedes refund in time (cancellation = pre-fulfilment, refund = post-fulfilment). A rising cancellation trend often correlates with later refund spikes (the unfixable issues that slip through cancellations show up as refunds). Both are revenue-leakage; pair the trends. **My chart is jumpy with small numbers, can I smooth it?** Toggle the rolling-average view (7-day or 14-day rolling). Daily counts on small-volume stores (\<100 orders/day) swing noisily; rolling averages reveal the trend. Use daily for spike detection, rolling for trend assessment. *** ### Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre *Cancelled Orders Over Time* is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across BigCommerce and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. [Start for free](https://app.vortexiq.ai/login) or [book a demo](https://www.vortexiq.ai/contact-us) to see this metric running on your own data.