Exclude line items from calculations by status

[jmauzyk]

I have an idea related to a challenge I'm trying to work around and would be interested to get your thoughts on. We've set up a custom integration with our ERP to help keep stock levels in sync. However, for various reasons, stock can become inaccurate, allowing customers to complete an order with a line item that is actually out of stock.

We need to reconcile this somehow after the fact. One way to handle this is to remove the out-of-stock line item from the order, but that's less transparent from a customer perspective. Another way is to keep the line item on the order, marking it with a “Cancelled” or similar line item status to indicate it wasn't fulfilled. This allows us to display the item as cancelled in the customer view, a practice that's followed by major retailers like Amazon and Target.

However, keeping the line item on the order means that the totals no longer accurately reflect what is actually being fulfilled. While the total price can be corrected using a custom adjuster, attributes like total weight, total quantity, etc. have no way to be adjusted. This means that any plugins that rely on those order methods are getting totals that don't accurately reflect what's actually being fulfilled.

I was thinking line item statuses could include an additional setting like a checkbox named “Exclude line items with this status from order calculations”. Totals would then exclude any line items with that status, allowing cancelled items to remain on the order for transparency while keeping fulfillment data accurate for integrations.

Is this a feature that you think could be beneficial and might be added at some point in the future? Or have I overcomplicated things and missed a simpler workaround?