What this is
Sometimes an order takes payment but never makes it to the merchant app — a stuck order. Spatula automatically detects orders that haven't progressed within a reasonable time and cancels them, refunding the customer's payment.
When an order gets cancelled automatically
The customer paid but the order never opened on the merchant app.
The order has been sitting in a new state for far longer than your prep time would normally allow.
Repeated retries to deliver the order to the merchant app have all failed.
What happens
The system marks the order as cancelled and refunds the payment to the customer's original method.
The customer receives a cancellation message explaining the order couldn't be processed.
The order appears in your dashboard order list with a clear auto-cancelled reason so you can see what happened.
How to avoid stuck orders
Keep the merchant app open and signed in during trading hours.
Make sure your printing tablet stays online and charged.
Watch the device heartbeat indicator — if your store shows offline, fix it before customers can't be served.
Pause your store from the merchant app or dashboard rather than just walking away from the device — paused stores reject new orders cleanly.