Zest gives your brand flexibility in how Child Order dollar amounts are pushed into Shopify. Understanding how this works helps you accurately reconcile revenue across Zest, Stripe, and Shopify — especially when working with different order types or accounting across reporting periods.
Parent and Child Orders
With Zest, a customer can make one purchase for one item to be delivered to multiple recipients. This creates a Parent Order and a Child Order.
Parent Order: The order placed in Zest with an associated payment transaction. A customer places one order for multiple recipients, documented as one Parent Order in Zest.
Child Order: The per-recipient order attached to the Zest Parent Order. Zest breaks down the customer's order into individual orders, creating multiple Child Orders.
The Child Order is generated and pushed into Shopify with dollar amounts for product price, sales tax, and shipping price.
Direct Ship Orders
When a direct ship gift is purchased, a Parent Order is created in Zest and payment is collected in Stripe. Child Orders are then generated and pushed into Shopify.
Direct ship workflow
Parent Order and Child Orders are created in Zest on the order date (e.g., December 22). Ten Child Orders are created and attached, and $500 is recorded in Zest.
Payment is processed in Stripe for all 10 gifts. $500 is recorded in Stripe.
Ten Child Orders are created in Shopify — one for each gift recipient. $500 is distributed across the Child Orders and recorded in Shopify.
E-Gift Orders
When an e-gift is purchased, a Parent Order is created in Zest and payment is collected in Stripe. The Child Order is not generated and pushed into Shopify until the e-gift is accepted.
E-gift accepted order creation workflow
Parent Order and Child Orders are created in Zest on the order date (e.g., December 22). Ten Child Orders are created and attached, and $500 is recorded in Zest.
Payment is processed in Stripe for all 10 gifts. $500 is recorded in Stripe.
Between December 22–31, 8 out of 10 e-gifts are accepted. Eight Child Orders with dollar amounts are generated and pushed into Shopify. $400 is recorded in Shopify for December.
On January 2, the remaining 2 e-gifts are accepted. Two Child Orders with dollar amounts are generated and pushed into Shopify. $100 is recorded in Shopify for January.
A discrepancy may occur between when dollar amounts are recorded in Shopify versus Zest and Stripe.
Unaccepted e-gifts
If an e-gift remains unaccepted, a Child Order will not be pushed into Shopify.
How Tax Is Applied to Orders
Zest calculates taxes using three factors:
Sales Tax Nexus: In your Tax Settings in Zest, select the states where you have Sales Tax Nexus.
Product Tax Codes: Tax codes attached to products in Shopify and used by your tax software to determine the correct tax rate for each product.
Destination address: Includes the billing address (address attached to payment) and the shipping address (address of the recipient).
Direct ship order tax workflow
Customer places a Parent Order with multiple gift recipients.
Zest calculates tax based on each recipient's shipping address, Nexus requirements, and the product's tax code.
Zest provides the tax total to the customer at checkout.
Customer checks out and payment is processed in Stripe.
One Parent Order and one Child Order per recipient are created in Zest.
Each Child Order is pushed into Shopify with the associated sales tax amount for the recipient's address.
E-gift accepted order tax workflow
Because the recipient's address is not available at the time of payment, Zest calculates e-gift sales tax based on the customer's billing address when the Parent Order is generated.
Customer places a Parent Order with gift recipient email addresses.
Zest calculates tax based on the billing address and Nexus requirements.
Zest provides the tax total to the customer at checkout.
Customer checks out and payment is processed in Stripe.
Gift recipient receives and accepts the e-gift.
A Child Order is generated and pushed into Shopify with the tax line item, product, and the recipient's shipping address, email address, and phone number.
Your tax software evaluates tax codes and shipping addresses in Shopify. You may see a difference between the tax collected (based on the billing address) and what your tax software reports (based on the recipient's shipping address) for an e-gift Child Order.
Your brand also has the option to add an informational pop-out to the Tax line item at checkout.
Cancellations and Refunds
There are three options for generating refunds and canceling orders, depending on order type and status. Each option will create a refund. Refunds issued in Zest do not flow into Shopify Child Orders.
Cancel and refund an entire order.
Issue a refund.
Automatically refund an e-gift payment.
Viewing refunds in reports
Stripe: Shows the refunded amount, transaction date, and the Zest Parent Order number.
Zest:
The Sales report shows the Parent Order refunds amount.
The Sales by Invite report shows the Child Order's Refund ID and net refunded amount for Storefront Orders only. The Refund ID is set to an external refund identifier (such as a Stripe or Adyen ID). The net refunded amount is only populated if the invite or entire order was specifically refunded.
Accounting Tip: The date the refund was issued is not reflected in Zest reports. Use the Stripe report to reconcile date-based reporting.
Shopify: Refunds do not appear in Shopify. The Child Order is not updated to reflect the refunded amount.