Overview
Post Purchase Upsell is designed to be smooth and seamless – but in rare cases, the upsell product might not get fully paid for. When this happens, Shopify marks the order as Partially paid. This doesn’t happen often, but when it does, you need to act to avoid shipping unpaid products.
When and Why It Happens
There are a few specific reasons this can occur:
The customer accepts an upsell offer, but the payment can’t be completed successfully.
The original order was fully paid, but the upsell item is added without a successful follow-up charge.
→ Shopify adds the product to the order and updates the order status to Partially paid. This reflects what was ordered and what has been paid, even though the customer may not notice anything unusual.
This is expected behavior across all apps using Shopify’s Post Purchase Extension – not specific to Nosto.
What You Should Do
There are two supported ways to handle a Partially paid order:
Collect payment for the unpaid item
If the customer should still receive the item, you can let them complete payment:Shopify automatically sends an email to the customer with a secure payment link.
You can also manually resend the payment request from the order view in Shopify.
Once payment is collected, the order status will update to Paid.
Remove the unpaid item manually
You can edit the order in Shopify and remove the upsell product. This restores the order status to Paid and ensures only paid products go to fulfillment.
Nosto's Recommendation
We strongly recommend reviewing your fulfillment setup to make sure unpaid upsell products aren’t accidentally shipped.
Shopify doesn’t fulfill partially paid orders by default, but third-party systems may behave differently.
If you’re using an ERP, shipping app, or automation tool, make sure it checks the Payment Status before triggering fulfillment.
Consider setting up automation rules to flag or pause these orders until resolved. For example, you can automatically tag any Partially paid order with “Manual Review” using Shopify Flow.
Notes on Payment Methods
Some payment methods are more likely to trigger this situation than others. If you're using any Third-Party Payment provider (other than Shopify Payments or PayPal), please take extra attention and ensure payments are collected accordingly.
Please also refer to:
Final Tip
Partially paid orders are rare, but they’re the most important scenario to be aware of before going live. If your team works with custom workflows or automated fulfillment, make sure this edge case is covered.