Test orders

A test order is an order you or your team place to try the store out: the checkout, the emails, a workflow. It is an order like any other in your lists, with a Test badge, but it is left out of your sales figures and goes to no fulfillment service, app or courier.

What a test order does

• It shows in Orders with a Test badge, and its page says it is a test order. Add filter › Order status › Test lists only test orders; is not leaves them out.
• It takes stock and uses discount codes like any order until you cancel it. Its order emails, payment reminders included, go to you, the member who placed it, so you see what customers get, and never to the email on it; an order you marked a test later sends them to nobody (an email you send again to an address you type still goes there). A bank transfer test order is never cancelled for want of payment. Your team’s new-order email and notification still come, and its returns and withdrawals show in the alerts bell.
• Your workflows run on it, so you can try one out.
• It is left out of Home (its counts of orders waiting open the list without test orders), the daily summary, Analytics (Live View too), every report and the report builder, profit, attribution, campaigns, Autopilot’s results, what a discount brought, A/B tests, a product’s sales and Best selling order, Transactions, the cash couriers owe you in Payouts, the EU distance-selling total in Taxes, the sales from AI assistants in Agentic, and the risk shown on your other orders: it is no customer’s earlier order.
• It is never sent to a fulfillment service, and your apps never hear of it or see it, so no courier app makes it a label: Make labels with a test order ticked says which one to untick. Only a customer’s request for their data, or to be erased, still lists every order of theirs for your apps. A payout cannot include it.
• No Meta or other pixel purchase, no Klaviyo, Mailchimp or Omnisend order, no Trustpilot invitation, no review request, and nobody can review it. No thank-you, next-order or best-customer email comes from it, and a win-back email counts from the customer’s last real order. An affiliate earns nothing from it, refunding it gives no store credit, and it gets no VAT invoice, so it takes no number from your invoices.
• It still counts on the customer: their orders, what they spent, segments and the conditions workflows check. The customer it was placed for is made or updated as for any order.
• It is paid in test mode only: by hand, cash on delivery, bank transfer, the test card where it is offered, or a payment provider in test mode. A gift card or store credit cannot pay it, and it cannot sell a gift card. A payment provider in live mode is refused.

Place a test order at your store’s checkout

1. On the Orders page, choose Test checkout. Your store opens in a new tab. If your browser blocks it, choose Open the store in the notice.
2. Shop as a customer would. At checkout, Test order is ticked beside the order button, in that browser, for the next four hours. Keep the link to yourself: whoever opens it can place test orders in your name. In that browser the store shows no Apple Pay or Google Pay buttons: a wallet always pays for real.
3. Place the order. Its page says Test order. in that browser; a customer you make a test order for sees their order without it.

Untick Test order to place a real order instead. Leave test checkout removes the box from that browser. The box also goes when you sign out of the admin or your role can no longer change orders; if that happens while it is ticked, the order is not placed and the checkout says why, so a test never becomes a real order by itself. A checkout opened after that says Test checkout ended in place of the box: an order placed there is a real one. The order’s timeline shows who placed it as a test.

If your store has its own domain, the link takes you there, and the box stays on that address: a market’s or a language’s own domain does not show it, and a store that sends visitors to their country’s or language’s address leaves that browser where the link opened it. A storefront built with your own code offers it too: its checkout is Storeloom’s. If your store asks visitors for its password, enter it: the link then goes on as usual (it stays in the address until you do).

Create a test order in the admin

On Create order, or when you create the order from a draft, tick Test order under how the customer pays. The order’s timeline shows who made it a test.

Mark an order as a test, or as a real one

On an order’s page, Mark as test makes it a test order, and Mark as real makes it a real one again. Each asks first, and each shows on the order’s timeline.

• An order can become a test only if no live payment was taken or tried for it, it has no VAT invoice, no payout records its money, it was not sent to a fulfillment service, no app has it (an app that was sent it or shipped it, such as a courier’s, a warehouse’s or your accounting app, keeps it as a real order), it has no gift card and no subscription, and no refund of it gave store credit. Once it is a test, your apps hear nothing of it.
• An order that is paid, in full or in part, by hand too, is made a test only by someone whose role may also refund orders: as a test it leaves your payouts and reports. For anyone else Mark as test is greyed out and says why.
• A test order paid in test mode stays a test, and so does one changed after it was paid while you issue invoices, as its invoice could no longer be the one it would have had. An order that was exchanged, and its exchange, stay as the exchange was made: the exchange takes the order’s flag, and neither can be marked or made real after, as one’s money paid for the other. Once it is real, your apps hear of it as of an order placed now, so one that sends, labels or books new orders does so, it counts in your reports, it gets its VAT invoice if it is paid and you issue invoices, with a credit note for each refund since, it goes to your fulfillment services as any order would, and if it shipped, its customer is asked for a review as after any shipment. An order placed as a test earns an affiliate nothing even once it is real; a real order’s commission is void only while it is a test. Email marketing services such as Klaviyo may not get it: they are sent orders newer than the last one they got.

An exchange for a test order, and the renewals of a subscription that began with one, are test orders too.

Exports

Export (CSV) leaves test orders out, unless you filter for them (Order status › Test) or tick them. Import and export › Export your store leaves them out unless you tick Include test orders.