The Orders page

The Orders page is where every sale lands, whichever storefront it came from. It is the place to start the day: today's outgoing orders and the ones that need a decision.

The order list

Orders arrive newest first. Each row shows the order number and the store's own reference, the customer's name, the destination country, the total and its currency, the payment status, the fulfilment status, the channel it came from and the date. If you run several stores, say a UK site, a wholesale shop and a marketplace, they all sit in this one list, and the channel column tells them apart. Your packing team works one queue instead of three, and when the stock is shared between stores you see it being consumed in one place.

Filters

On a busy day the filters cut the list down to the orders you need. The search box finds an order by customer name, order number or email. The payment filter shows only paid, pending or refunded orders; the fulfilment filter shows only unshipped, shipped or partly shipped ones; the store filter keeps one storefront in view; and the date range limits the list to the last 7, 14 or 30 days or a range you choose. Reset filters brings the full list back. "All unpaid orders from the last week on the UK store" is three filters, and the result is a worklist you can hand to someone.

The expanded row

Click the arrow at the start of a row and it expands into everything about that order: the recipient's name, address and phone, the billing address if it differs, the customer's email and payment method, when it was paid and whether it was cancelled, the money (subtotal, shipping, tax, discounts, duties, total and anything refunded), every line item with quantity, weight, price and discount, and every parcel already shipped for the order with its carrier, service and tracking number. When a customer phones to ask where their order is, you have their address, their tracking number and the link in one click.

The list is for the team. The expanded row is for the customer on the phone.

Automatic stock movements

When a customer pays, the order is in this list within seconds and its units are reserved, so the available figure drops and the committed figure rises by the same amount. Nobody else can buy those units anywhere, so two customers cannot buy the last one at the same time on two storefronts. The detail of that moment is in Incoming orders.

When the order is marked fulfilled, by you here or by your store when your warehouse software tells it to, the reserved units become shipped units: committed drops, on hand drops, and the stock view shows the units in the building after the shipping run. Cancel an order in your store before it ships and the reserved units go back to available on their own.

Refund types

Refunds are the easiest place to lose track of stock, so the account asks where the goods ended up. Restock means the customer sent the goods back and they are fine to sell: the units go back into available stock and the refund is recorded on the order. No restock means the customer kept the goods, or they came back damaged and went in the bin: the money is recorded and nothing goes back on the shelf. Cancel before ship means you refunded before anything left: the reservation is released and no goods moved. Pick the right one and the figures your accountant and your warehouse manager look at stay in agreement.