Substitute order products

[digitalWestie]

What is the right way (or is there a way?) to record substitute products in a complete order?

To clarify, I mean a situation where a customer has ordered a product that's not available, but there's an alternative product that could replace it.

At present the way I've gone about this is adding the substitute item to the order and then cancelling (not deleting) the original item. If there's a difference in price I then add an adjustment to keep the price the same.

This works OK but ideally I'd like to create a shipment with the substitute product(s) without altering the list of products ordered by the customer. That way I have a record of what the customer wanted, and what I actually sent.

This could also work for a situation where I added something extra (e.g. a surprise gift) into the shipment that wasn't part of the original order.