Blocked Orders: What You Can See
Why There's No Blocked Orders Log
OrderRules checks the cart at checkout through a Shopify Function. When a rule fails, the shopper sees your message and the checkout stops. Shopify never creates an order, so there's nothing for OrderRules to record.
That means OrderRules can't tell you how many checkouts it stopped, or which shoppers tried. What you can see is when your limits were reached.
What You Can See Instead
In Analytics:
- Daily Breakdown -- one row per day with Orders, Limit Used and a Status: Limit hit, Near limit or Normal
- Daily Orders Trend -- orders per day, with your daily limit drawn as a line
- Order Capacity -- how much of your daily, weekly and monthly limits you've used
- Top Products and Busiest Days of the Week -- where demand concentrates
On the dashboard, the Order limit reached banner tells you new orders are being blocked right now. With email notifications (Pro plan and above), the 100% capacity alert tells you the moment a limit is reached.
Accessing the Data
- Go to Analytics from the dashboard
- Pick a date range
- Scroll to Daily Breakdown and look at the Status column
What Stops a Checkout
The shopper sees the message for the rule that failed. The main reasons:
Store Closed
The shopper tried to check out outside your business hours or on a Closed date. If this matters to you, consider extending your hours or saying in your closed message when you reopen.
Daily/Weekly/Monthly Limit Reached
Your store-wide cap was hit. If this happens often and you have room to fulfill more orders, consider raising the limit.
Product Limit Reached
A product's cap, which is a shared total across all shoppers, was used up. Review whether the product limit is still appropriate.
Customer Limit Reached
A logged-in customer reached their own limit, or a guest tried to check out while customer limits are on. This is normal if you are controlling access to limited items.
Reasons and what to do
| Reason | What happened | Usual fix |
|---|---|---|
| Store closed | Checkout attempted outside business hours | Extend hours, or say when you reopen |
| Daily/weekly/monthly limit reached | Your store-wide cap was hit | Raise the cap if you could have fulfilled more |
| Product limit reached | That product's shared cap was used up | Review whether that limit still fits demand |
| Customer limit reached | A customer hit their own cap | Usually working as intended on allocated items |
Rarely hitting a limit isn't a failure β it means the limits are a safety net rather than an active restriction.
Using the Data
Many Limit hit days? Your limit may be too low. Check whether you could fulfill more orders and increase the cap.
Hitting the limit soon after opening? You might have demand building overnight. Consider opening earlier or raising the limit.
One product always selling out its limit? That product is in high demand. You can increase its limit, boost production, or keep the limit and use the scarcity to your advantage.
Almost never near a limit? Your limits might be set higher than needed. This is fine if your goal is a safety net rather than active restriction.
Tips
- Review the Daily Breakdown weekly to keep your limits aligned with actual demand
- Cross-reference it with your capacity alert emails to see the full picture
- Click Export CSV to analyse the breakdown alongside your other business metrics