An order placed but not yet paid

Minutes to undo

You have created an order and paid nothing. Backing out costs you almost nothing right now, which will not be true for long. The useful question is not whether you want it. It is what changes the moment the first payment lands.

Osiris market addresses

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Printed as supplied, in no order. Nothing here is watched or timed, so an address that loads is not proof of anything. More about the set

1.An order with nothing behind it

An unpaid order is a request with a price attached. The market has reserved a slot, quoted a figure and started waiting. No value has moved, which is why this sits at the cheap end of the window index.

Two things end that state. You pay, or the invoice lapses. Both are boundaries and only one of them is yours.

Window opens: When the order is created and the invoice is quoted.
Window closes: When the first payment arrives, or the invoice lapses.
What closes it: Payment, or the market's own limit on how long a quote stands.
Still possible after: Everything that belongs to a paid order, which is a longer list.

2.What backing out costs you now

Usually very little. An unpaid order that lapses tends to leave nothing but a line in your own history. Worth knowing, because people pay for things they have already changed their mind about purely to avoid an imagined penalty.

The general case is not every case. Some vendors count orders placed and abandoned, and some markets attach a friction to accounts that do it often. Neither is dramatic. Both mean it is usually cheap rather than always free.

Read moreThe rule: reversibility beats severityWhy cheap now and cheap later are different questions.

3.What the quoted amount actually is

A quote with a shelf life. Where the price is held in one unit and paid in another, the figure on screen is a conversion made when the order was created, and it holds only as long as the invoice. Think about it while you make tea and the number can be a different number.

Underpaying by a fraction because you used a stale figure is a slow, tedious problem. It is one of the most common ways to spend a week on messages. Refresh the invoice rather than trusting a screenshot.

ImportantPaying an expired invoice is worse than paying nothing. The money leaves, the order it was meant for has lapsed, and you are left asking somebody to match a payment to something that no longer exists.

4.Decide while it is still free

Decide now, while nothing has moved. This is the cheapest moment you will get.
If you are keeping it, refresh the invoice so the figure and the destination are both current.
Check the destination the slow way, as set out under a wrong address pasted but not sent.
If you are dropping it, cancel properly rather than closing the tab and hoping.

The last one gets ignored. A tab closed on an unpaid order leaves it open, and an order you forgot is how people end up paying an invoice that lapsed two days ago.

5.What people wrongly believe

That an unpaid order costs nothing to abandon in every case. Usually it costs nothing. Usually is doing real work in that sentence.
That the quoted amount holds while you think about it. The quote is a conversion made at one moment and stands only as long as the invoice.

A third is quieter. People assume that because they have not paid, the order is invisible. It exists on the vendor side too, and a run of created and abandoned orders is a pattern somebody can see. An order left half-attended has its own slower entry.

Also usefulA withdrawal you have not takenThe other place where doing nothing is itself a decision.

6.Once the first payment lands

Everything changes shape. The order becomes a position, with escrow behind it and slower boundaries that live in the days-or-a-window section. You gain rights you did not have and lose the ability to walk away for free.

A quote is a photograph of a rate.

It was accurate when the order was made. It describes that moment and no other, and the longer you leave it, the more it describes a moment that has passed.

Questions people send in

Will an unpaid order affect my account?

One will not, in the ordinary case. A habit of them can, because vendors and markets keep their own counts and neither publishes the threshold.

What if I pay just after it lapses?

You have sent money against something that no longer exists. That becomes a support conversation with no guarantee.

Can I change the quantity instead of cancelling?

Usually you cancel and place another. That is fine while nothing is paid, which is the whole point of this page.