Automatically cancel a WooCommerce order after 3 failed attempts
In WooCommerce, when a payment fails, the order status changes to “failed“. This can happen for several reasons: a declined card, insufficient funds, or a payment gateway error. If your store handles a high volume of orders, too many failed orders can clutter your system and cause confusion.
A helpful solution is to automatically cancel any order that has failed 3 times, keeping your store clean and organized.
In this article, I’ll show you a PHP snippet you can paste into your child theme’s functions.phpfile or add to a custom plugin.
How does the logic work?
- Every time an order status changes to “failed”, we’ll count how many times that order has already failed.
- We’ll store that number in a custom order meta field.
- If the counter reaches 3, we automatically change the order status to “cancelled”.
PHP code to cancel orders after 3 failures
<?php
add_action( 'woocommerce_order_status_failed', 'autoCancelFailedOrder' );
function autoCancelFailedOrder( $orderId ) {
$order = wc_get_order( $orderId );
if ( ! $order ) {
return;
}
// Get current fail count
$failCount = $order->get_meta( '_fail_count' );
if ( ! $failCount ) {
$failCount = 1;
} else {
$failCount++;
}
// Save the new fail count
$order->update_meta_data( '_fail_count', $failCount );
$order->save();
// Cancel the order if it failed 3 times
if ( $failCount >= 3 ) {
$order->update_status( 'cancelled', 'Order automatically cancelled after 3 failed attempts.' );
}
}
Where should you place this code?
You have two options:
- In your child theme’s
functions.phpfile – ideal if you don’t have a custom plugin. - Inside a custom plugin – recommended if you want to keep your code separate from the theme.
Can you customize this behavior?
Of course! Some ideas:
- Instead of canceling the order, you could send an email notification to the store admin.
- You could reduce the number of attempts (e.g., cancel after 2 failures).
- You could change the order status to something custom like
pending-verification.
This small snippet helps you keep your WooCommerce store tidy by avoiding the buildup of failed orders. Plus, it automates a task you’d otherwise have to do manually.
