Anonymization

Sales orders and return orders contain personal data of consumers: names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Privacy laws such as the GDPR (Europe) and the CCPA (California) require you to keep such data no longer than needed. Anonymization removes the personal data from an order while keeping the order itself, with its products, quantities, dates and references, for reporting and history.

What gets anonymized

When an order is anonymized, each of its contacts (Delivery, Billing, Pickup) is masked: every character of these fields is replaced by an asterisk (*):

Masked	Kept
Company name	Postal code
First name	City
Last name	State or province
Address lines	Country
Phone number
Fax number
Email

Postal code, city and country are kept, so you can still report on where orders went without identifying anyone. The order is marked as anonymized.

Shipments are anonymized separately; see below.

Anonymization cannot be undone

The original data is overwritten. There is no way to restore it in Boxture.

Which orders can be anonymized

• Only sales orders and return orders. Other order types contain no consumer data.
• Only orders that are completed or cancelled. Open orders still need their address for shipping or collection.
• Orders that are not anonymized yet.

An anonymized order can no longer be over-received.

Anonymizing an order by hand

1. Open the completed or cancelled sales or return order.
2. In the order menu, choose Anonymize.

The order is anonymized immediately. The Anonymize action is available to Admins and Warehouse associates, and only for orders that can be anonymized.

Automatic anonymization

Boxture can anonymize orders automatically after a period. Set Data protection › Order anonymize period to the number of days after completion that orders should be anonymized. The period can be different for sales orders and return orders. The default is 0, which means orders are never anonymized automatically.

Every night Boxture anonymizes the orders of each account that:

• are of a type for which a period is set,
• are completed,
• were completed at least that many days ago,
• are not anonymized yet.

Cancelled orders

Automatic anonymization only handles completed orders. Cancelled orders can be anonymized by hand.

Shipments

Shipments carry their own copy of the delivery address, which ends up on labels and carrier data. They are anonymized separately with Data protection › Shipment anonymize period: every night, shipments that were shipped at least that many days ago are anonymized. The default of 0 means shipments are never anonymized automatically. Set both periods to make sure all personal data of an order is removed.

Finding anonymized orders

Anonymized orders stay in the order list. Their contact tabs show the masked values.