Helm › Helm University › Track 3 › Lesson 3.5
Lesson 3.5When the buyer is a child
Two spend caps, one approval queue, and a wait with no time limit that holds your stock the whole time.
Prefer to listen? This is the same lesson, word for word. The text below is the transcript.
This lesson prepares you to: Explain the parental controls that sit between a minor and your order, and what they mean for your stock.
Two different mechanisms, often confused
Helm applies two separate protections to a kid or teen buyer, and they behave completely differently.
Spend caps are a hard block. If a parent has set a per order limit or a daily limit and the purchase would exceed it, the order is refused outright. No queue, no approval. A parent cannot approve past their own cap; it simply does not happen.
Approval is a queue. The order is created, sits at awaiting approval, and waits for a linked parent to decide.
Who needs approval by default
If a family has not configured anything, the defaults are that kids require approval and teens do not. A parent can change either.
What this does to your stock
This is the part that affects you directly, and it is worth being precise.
Stock is taken before the approval is requested, not after it is granted. From the moment a child checks out, your item is held. If the parent approves, it stays held and they go on to pay. If the parent denies it, the order is cancelled and your stock comes straight back.
And there is no time limit. An order can sit at awaiting approval indefinitely, holding your stock, until a parent answers or you notice. If you sell one of something, this is the case to know about.
A real gap, stated plainly
No parent is notified when a purchase is waiting for them. Helm has a whole notification system for routing things to parents, and it is used for refunds and for other approvals, but a shop purchase does not call it. A parent only sees the request if they happen to open the approvals list. That is a genuine half built control rather than a design choice, and until it is fixed the wait may be long.
Approval is not a second check
When a parent approves, the order moves to pending and the child can pay. Approving does not re-check the spend caps, does not re-check that your stock is still there, and does not re-check that your Stripe connection is ready. It is a single decision on a single order.
Denial is final
A denied order is cancelled and cannot be revived. Your stock is returned. The child cannot pay it and the parent cannot change their mind on the same order; the child would have to buy again.
What Helm tells you
Your order list hides orders awaiting parental approval, which is the correct default. It is worth knowing that the filter can be asked for them explicitly, which is a small privacy gap on Helm's side rather than something you need to act on.
The practical takeaway is simple: if you sell limited stock and a unit seems to vanish without an order appearing, a child has bought it and a parent has not answered yet.