Canceling Pending Purchases and Reinvestments

Accidentally placed an order? Before it settles, you can still pull it back. Here’s how cancellation works in TreasuryViewer and a few things worth knowing before you go through with it.

Getting to your pending orders

You can reach the Manage Orders screen from two places:

Open the Buy tab and tap Manage Orders in the top-right corner.
Open the Profile tab, tap your name or user card to get into Account Settings, then tap Manage Orders under the Purchases section.

Both routes take you to the same screen. It lists every order that’s been placed but hasn’t settled yet, with each entry showing the confirmation number, security type, dollar amount, and expected issue date.

Cancelling one order

Tap the order you want to cancel.
On the Order Details screen, scroll down to the red Cancel Order button and tap it.
A pop-up will ask you to confirm: “Are you sure you want to cancel order ‘[confirmation]’?” — tap Yes.
If TreasuryDirect accepts the request, the screen closes and that order drops off your list.

Cancelling everything at once

With two or more pending orders, a Cancel All option appears in the upper-right corner of the orders list. Tap it, then tap Yes, Cancel All to confirm (or No to back out).

Watch the clock

Cancellation isn’t always available. TreasuryDirect enforces cutoff times that differ by security type. Marketable securities — Bills, Notes, Bonds, TIPS, FRNs — generally need to be cancelled before their auction closes. Savings bonds have a cutoff of the day before the issue date. TreasuryViewer will always send the cancellation request, but if the window has already closed, TreasuryDirect will reject it and you’ll get an error. At that point, nothing more can be done from the app.

Reinvestments

The number of reinvestments tied to an order gets set during purchase, in the Additional Options section of the buy form. There’s no way to edit just that setting on a pending order after the fact — if you need to change it, you’d have to cancel the order and resubmit with the correct reinvestment count. For orders that have already settled and no longer appear on the Manage Orders screen, you’d need to handle any reinvestment changes directly on the TreasuryDirect website.

Your bank account stays untouched

Cancelling a pending order won’t produce a refund because nothing was charged to begin with. Funds don’t move until settlement, so removing the order before that point simply scraps the scheduled transaction entirely.

TreasuryDirect handles cancellations differently depending on where a transaction is in its lifecycle, so the steps you’ll follow depend on which situation you’re in.

Canceling a Purchase That’s Already Pending

A pending purchase is one that hasn’t been issued to your holdings or gift box yet. You can’t modify it in place — your only option is to delete it and, if needed, re-enter it from scratch.

There are deadlines to be aware of. Marketable Treasury securities need to be canceled before the auction closes. For savings bonds and Zero-Percent Certificates of Indebtedness, the cutoff is 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time the day before the issue date.

To cancel a pending purchase:

Log in to your primary TreasuryDirect account.
Click the ManageDirect tab at the top of the page.
Under Manage My Securities, select “View/Delete a pending purchase/reinvestment”.
On the Pending Transactions page, click Submit.
A Summary List will load with your pending transactions. Select the radio button next to the confirmation number you want to cancel, then click Submit.
On the Detail page, click Delete.
When asked “Are you sure you want to delete this transaction?” — select Yes.
If this purchase is part of a recurring savings bond schedule, an additional screen will appear asking whether you want to cancel just this one upcoming purchase or the entire remaining series. Pick whichever applies and click Select.

The transaction will then be removed.

Adjusting or Removing Reinvestments That Aren’t Pending Yet

If a reinvestment hasn’t reached pending status, you have a bit more room to work with. You can change how many times a security gets reinvested going forward, or cut the schedule down to nothing.

To edit or cancel scheduled reinvestments:

Log in to your primary TreasuryDirect account.
Go to the ManageDirect tab at the top of the page.
Under Manage My Securities, click “Edit” reinvestments.
On the Reinvestment Edit page, select the security type you want to adjust and click Submit.
The Reinvestment Request Edit page will come up. Find the confirmation number for the security you’re changing and select it. From there, update the Number of Reinvestments field to whatever count you want going forward. To cancel all scheduled reinvestments for that security, set the number to 0. Click Submit.
You’ll land back on the ManageDirect page with a confirmation that your changes have been saved.