WooCommerce: Allow Order Editing For Custom Order Status

WooCommerce admins are allowed to “edit” an order only when this is in the “on hold” or “pending payment” status. By “edit” I mean having the chance of modifying or adding products, fees, shipping and recalculating the totals, which are not allowed once the order has been placed (“processing“, “completed“, etc.).

However, there are many reasons why you’d want to have the right to edit a processing, completed, or custom status order – of course as long as you don’t end up changing the total, as customers already paid at that stage.

Think about the following scenarios:

  • you customized the items table and added a custom field, and you want to set the custom field value when the order is “processing
  • you need to edit the shipping method name AFTER checkout, and you want to be able to rename it when the order is “completed
  • you need to add a fee and a discount of equal amounts (so that the total stays the same) before completing the order

Either way, let’s enable the little “pencil icon” on a custom order status, so that the admin can customize the order whenever they wish!

This processing order “is no longer editable”. Let’s change that with a simple snippet!

PHP Snippet: Edit Order @ Custom Order Status

Note: instead of “processing“, you can use “completed“, “cancelled“, or any custom order status.

/**
 * @snippet       Allow Order Edit @ Custom Status
 * @how-to        Get CustomizeWoo.com FREE
 * @author        Rodolfo Melogli
 * @compatible    WooCommerce 7
 * @community     https://businessbloomer.com/club/
 */

add_filter( 'wc_order_is_editable', 'bbloomer_custom_order_status_editable', 9999, 2 );

function bbloomer_custom_order_status_editable( $allow_edit, $order ) {
    if ( $order->get_status() === 'processing' ) {
        $allow_edit = true;
    }
    return $allow_edit;
}

Once this is running, here’s what happens to a “processing” order:

… which means all the buttons and clickable edit icons are now back, and you can add, remove, replace and edit order items as you wish.

Where to add custom code?

You should place custom PHP in functions.php and custom CSS in style.css of your child theme: where to place WooCommerce customization?

This code still works, unless you report otherwise. To exclude conflicts, temporarily switch to the Storefront theme, disable all plugins except WooCommerce, and test the snippet again: WooCommerce troubleshooting 101

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Rodolfo Melogli

Business Bloomer Founder

Author, WooCommerce expert and WordCamp speaker, Rodolfo has worked as an independent WooCommerce freelancer since 2011. His goal is to help entrepreneurs and developers overcome their WooCommerce nightmares. Rodolfo loves travelling, chasing tennis & soccer balls and, of course, wood fired oven pizza. Follow @rmelogli

8 thoughts on “WooCommerce: Allow Order Editing For Custom Order Status

  1. It works
    However, I don’t see the inventory being updated on them (I mean the inventory within the product does update but is not shown in the order notes.)
    Can you help me with this?
    Ty

    1. Hello Michael, thanks so much for your comment! Yes, this is definitely possible, but I’m afraid it’s custom work. If you’d like to get a quote, feel free to contact me here. Thanks a lot for your understanding!

  2. I used your code and I can modify orders when they are in the ‘processing’ status, but for orders with a custom status, I can’t make any changes.

    1. Weird. Can you share your code please, and the order status slug for your custom status?

  3. First, I’d like to say thank you… Second, why isn’t some of these things available as a choice mechanism on the backend anyway? LOL

    I’ve been maintaining multiple retail sites that ALWAYS need to be edited for some reason. Switching it to “ON HOLD” just to make a alteration, then back to processing has been frustrating.

    Now, problem solved. Once again, THANK YOU.

  4. This caused fatal errors on my site

    1. Thank you. Can you paste here your error log please?

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