Recharge Charge Succeeded But Shopify Order Missing
Root cause
Recharge successfully charges the customer in Stripe but fails to create a corresponding Shopify order. This happens when Recharge's order creation webhook to Shopify fails or times out, when Shopify's API returns an error during order creation, or when a Shopify rate limit is hit during the order creation call. The Stripe payment is captured but the merchant's fulfillment system has no order to process.
Symptoms
- • Stripe Dashboard shows a successful charge for the subscription amount
- • Recharge shows the charge as QUEUED or PENDING with no order ID
- • Shopify Orders does not contain an order for the billing period
- • Customer's product has not shipped despite payment being collected
- • Recharge charge webhook shows an error in the delivery log
How to fix it
Confirm the Stripe charge and Recharge charge status
In Stripe Dashboard, locate the charge by customer email and confirm it shows succeeded. In Recharge Admin, find the same charge and check its status. If Recharge shows ERROR or QUEUED after a charge that Stripe confirms succeeded, you have a cross-stack mismatch. Note the Recharge charge ID and Stripe PaymentIntent ID for reconciliation.
Manually create the missing Shopify order
In Shopify Admin, manually create a draft order for the customer's subscription products for the billing period. Mark the order as paid — the payment was already collected in Stripe. Send the draft order to the fulfillment workflow. This prevents the customer from waiting for fulfillment while the order is missing.
Open in admin →Investigate and fix Recharge webhook delivery failures
In Recharge Admin, go to Developers > Webhooks and review delivery logs for the charge/success or order/created event. Check for HTTP 5xx errors from your Shopify endpoint or Recharge's outbound webhook errors. Common causes: Shopify API rate limiting, timeout on the order creation endpoint, or authentication failures. Implement a reconciliation job that compares Stripe charges to Shopify orders daily.
Frequently asked questions
What do I tell the customer if their payment succeeded but order is missing?
Be direct: 'Your payment was processed successfully. We encountered a technical issue creating your order and are resolving it now. Your order will ship within [timeframe].' Do not mention the cross-stack mismatch. Create the manual order before contacting the customer so you have a concrete resolution to offer.
How do I prevent Recharge charge success without Shopify order creation?
Implement a daily reconciliation job that queries Stripe for all successful charges in the past 24 hours and cross-references them against Shopify orders created in the same period. Flag any Stripe charge with no matching Shopify order. This catches the mismatch before customers notice their order has not shipped.
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