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Client Integrations — Order PII Retention, Anonymisation & Lifecycle

This guide explains how ParcelPilot handles Personal Identifiable Information (PII) on ecommerce orders, how order retention works, and how the Client Integration workflow policy affects lifecycle behavior.

Overview

PII is any information that can identify a customer or another individual.

Common examples include:

  • customer name
  • company
  • email address
  • telephone number
  • billing address
  • shipping address
  • customer notes
  • IP address
  • browser or user agent
  • payment URLs
  • other customer identifying information

ParcelPilot separates:

  • operational order data
  • customer personal data

This allows the system to keep warehouse and order history for reporting, audit, finance, and operational traceability while still complying with data-retention requirements.

What is retained

When an order becomes eligible for anonymisation, ParcelPilot does not remove the operational facts needed to understand what happened.

The following remain available:

  • order number
  • dates
  • SKUs
  • products
  • quantities
  • warehouse activity
  • shipment history
  • tracking numbers
  • financial totals
  • audit history
  • operational metadata

These records remain available for reporting, warehouse history, support investigation, and auditing.

What is anonymised

When ParcelPilot anonymises an eligible ecommerce order, customer-identifiable fields are replaced with [redacted].

This applies across supported order payload shapes, including:

  • normalized customer data
  • normalized shipping data
  • normalized billing data
  • stored upstream payload copies
  • WooCommerce raw payload data

This means the personal data is removed while the operational order facts remain intact.

Client Integration Workflow Settings

The Order workflow policy in a Client Integration controls how imported ecommerce orders behave through their lifecycle.

For the broader workflow overview, see:

When the eCommerce platform marks an order completed

Keep in ParcelPilot as read-only means:

  • the order remains available
  • warehouse users cannot continue normal operational changes on it
  • historical reporting is preserved

This is useful when shipped or completed marketplace orders still need to remain visible for support, finance, or audit history.

When the eCommerce platform cancels an order

Cancel locally and release reservation means:

  • stock reservations are released
  • inventory becomes available again
  • audit history is preserved

This removes live warehouse demand from cancelled upstream orders without losing the historical record that the order existed.

When an operator removes an eCommerce order locally

Suppress from warehouse views means the order is hidden from operational warehouse workflows while remaining retained where needed for history, audit, or later reference.

This is intended for orders that should no longer appear in active warehouse queues but should not simply be deleted.

Mark completed orders as eligible for accounting export

If enabled, completed orders become eligible for accounting export.

This is independent of PII anonymisation. An order can remain relevant for finance workflows even if customer-identifiable information is later anonymised under the retention policy.

Keep completed orders for accounting

Setting:

  • retention.keep_completed_for_accounting

If enabled, completed orders that are still required for accounting workflows remain excluded from PII anonymisation until they are no longer required for that purpose.

This is a retention control, not just a visibility setting.

Keep cancelled orders for audit/history

Setting:

  • retention.keep_cancelled_for_audit

Cancelled orders can be retained for audit, support, and historical tracing.

If enabled, cancellation does not automatically make the order eligible for removal or anonymisation. It stays available as part of the retained order history until the retention policy allows anonymisation.

Allow PII anonymisation while keeping order facts

Setting:

  • retention.allow_pii_anonymisation

When enabled, ParcelPilot is allowed to anonymise customer-identifiable information while preserving the non-personal operational facts of the order.

This is the main switch that allows order retention to preserve warehouse history without keeping personal data forever.

Order PII anonymisation period

The selected period determines when completed ecommerce orders become eligible for PII anonymisation.

Available options are:

  • 3 months
  • 6 months
  • 12 months
  • 24 months

Eligibility is calculated from the order date.

After the retention period expires, the scheduled retention process automatically anonymises the personal information while preserving the operational order history.

Examples

Example 1

Order completed

↓

24 month retention selected

↓

24 months pass

↓

Customer details anonymised

↓

Warehouse history, shipment history, and reporting remain intact.

Example 2

Cancelled order

↓

Reservations released

↓

Order retained for audit

↓

Customer information anonymised later if allowed by the configured retention policy.

Notes

  • anonymisation is irreversible
  • warehouse reporting is unaffected
  • accounting exports are unaffected
  • audit history is preserved
  • the process is automatic once an order becomes eligible