Link My Books does a daily lookup of all orders from your Shopify store. This is to ensure that all orders that are not part of Shopify Payments payouts are captured.
Most orders will have a valid transaction type which shows the payment gateway information, however in some rare cases the gateway information may be missing or there may not be a valid transaction associated to the order at all.
In these rare cases we group these orders under the Unknown gateway.
Which orders are included in the Unknown gateway?
There are two main reasons an order may be grouped in the unknown gateway:
The order has no payment transactions.
The order has a payment authorisation but no payment capture, meaning the payment was not completed.
Specific cases, such as gift card payments or third-party integrations, have triggered data discrepancies leading to the Unknown gateway categorization.
Why does this happen?
Generally, we see this when stores use third party apps to import orders from other sales channels into Shopify. These apps do not always record orders in the correct way and this can result in information being missing regarding the payment transactions for orders.
However, we also see that payment gateways such as PayPal and Braintree will sometimes report a payment authorisation transaction for an order but no subsequent payment capture transaction. This means that the order is left in the "Authorised" state in Shopify and therefore not included in their finance summary reports.
Should I enable the Unknown gateway on Link My Books?
It depends. If you use a third party importer and you want those orders included as a separate Shopify payment gateway summary generated by Link My Books and you can't already see that gateway in the normal list of Shopify Gateways, then yes enable the unknown gateway.
Settings > Settlement Settings > Shopify Payment Gateways
If you don't use a third party app to import orders, or you can see that app is already listed as a payment gateway (meaning the third party app is reporting orders correctly) then we generally suggest you keep the unknown gateway turned off.
Remap Unknown Gateway orders using channel name
If you do choose to enable to Unknown gateway, it is highly recommended that you also enable channel name remapping:
With this enabled Link My Books will replace "Unknown" with the name of the channel for the order, which in general the third party apps are good at including since it is their own app name ;)
This will make it easier for you to identify which orders come form which gateway if you have multiple different types of unknown gateway orders. Enabling this feature helps streamline reconciliation as it clarifies transaction sources and ensures better accuracy during audits.
If you have any questions about this article or feedback on how we could make it better please reach out to the support team via the blue chat icon on the bottom right of the page or via email to [email protected].