Delete entities

Paddle is a merchant of record, which means you can't delete most entities. They're considered financial records, or relate to financial records, so have to be retained for record-keeping purposes. For example:

• Transactions are considered financial records.
• Subscriptions describe a recurring billing relationship with a customer. They create transactions.
• Customers, addresses, and businesses describe who transactions are for.
• Prices describe what transactions are for.

Instead of deleting, you can archive an entity when you no longer need it. You can archive customers and their related entities, as well as entities that make up your product catalog.

Use the sandbox to test

If you're testing changes, use your sandbox account. The sandbox is separate to your live account, so changes don't impact your live account.

How it works

When you archive an entity:

• It can't be used in Paddle, though it remains related to existing entities
• It isn't returned in most list operations by default
• It won't show up in default views in the Paddle dashboard

Archived entities remain on your Paddle system, so you can still get information about them in the future. You can unarchive them if you want to work with them again.

Check the API reference for an entity to see if its status can be changed to archived.

Archive an entity

Send a PATCH request to the relevant update operation endpoint. For example, to update a product:

Request

This example renames a product and archives it.

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1{
2  "name": "AeroEdit Pro (old)",
3  "status": "archived"
4}

Response

If successful, Paddle responds with a copy of the archived product entity.

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1{
2  "data": {
3    "id": "pro_01gsz4t5hdjse780zja8vvr7jg",
4    "name": "AeroEdit Pro (old)",
5    "status": "archived",
6    "tax_category": "standard",
7    "type": "standard",
8    "description": "Designed for professional pilots, including all features plus in Basic plus compliance monitoring, route optimization, and third-party integrations.",
9    "image_url": "https://paddle.s3.amazonaws.com/user/165798/bT1XUOJAQhOUxGs83cbk_pro.png",
10    "custom_data": {
11      "features": {
12        "aircraft_performance": true,
13        "compliance_monitoring": true,
14        "flight_log_management": true,
15        "payment_by_invoice": false,
16        "route_planning": true,
17        "sso": false
18      },
19      "suggested_addons": [
20        "pro_01h1vjes1y163xfj1rh1tkfb65",

Unarchive an entity

To unarchive an entity, send a PATCH request to the relevant update operation endpoint. Include status as active.

Cancel transactions or subscriptions

Subscriptions and transactions have different statuses to other entities.

Cancel a transaction

If you created a transaction in error, you can cancel it. The canceled transaction remains on your system for record-keeping purposes.

Send a PATCH request to the /transactions/{transaction_id} endpoint, setting status to canceled.

You can't cancel a transaction that's completed. Once a transaction is completed, you can create an adjustment to make post-billing changes to it, like refunding or crediting part or all of it.

Cancel a subscription

Canceling a subscription is a core part of the subscription lifecycle. You should make sure customers can cancel their subscription, and have access to their data until their cancellation goes through.

Use the cancel a subscription operation to cancel a subscription. See: Cancel a subscription

Delete a notification destination

Notification destinations are not related to financial records, so they can be deleted as well as deactivated. See: Work with notification destinations

Related pages