When a customer buys from your online store, the order will appear in your store admin → My Sales → Orders and you will receive a notification email or mobile push notification.
The Orders page is where you can view and manage all your orders. You will have access to all of the order details, such as payment and shipping information, items ordered, a customer name, contact information, and billing address. You can also do a search for orders, or filter them by different categories, for example, find all orders paid by PayPal, orders placed in March, or orders waiting for processing.
Orders for digital products or gift cards are automatically fulfilled. When a customer purchases a digital product/gift card, they receive a link to download the file or a gift card code by email.
When an order for physical products is placed, you will need to fulfill that order. Here are the basic steps you should go through:
Signs you have a new order
When you receive an online order:
You will receive a new order notification by email. The email will come from [email protected] with the subject line “[Your store name], new order #X”.
You will receive a new order mobile push notification.
The Orders page will display the new order as soon as your customer has placed it.
The customer will receive an order confirmation email.
Reviewing orders
To review your orders, go to the Orders page from your store admin and open the order to view its details.
In the order details, you will see:
Order #
Date and time when the order was placed
Payment and shipping status
Admin order notes
Items
Quantities
Customer email
Shipping method
Payment details
Shipping address
Customer order comments
Shipping costs
Handling fee
Tax
Discount
Subtotal
Order total
Before you start processing a new order, we highly recommend that you check whether you’ve received the payment for the order.
A Paid order status means that your customer selected an online payment option and the third-party provider successfully processed the payment. Congrats: you just got paid! Now you can prepare the order and ship it to the buyer.
An Awaiting payment order status can mean one of two things:
Your customer selected an offline payment method and you need to contact them to arrange payment.
Your customer’s online payment was not processed. Open the order details page and go to the Payment section to view the detailed payment summary and the reason the payment failed.
After you have received the payment from the customer and you have all the necessary details, you can change the order status to Processing and start fulfilling the order.
Fulfilling orders
When you’re ready to ship a physical order, you need to prepare, pack, and deliver the items to your customer. This process is referred to as “order fulfillment” and includes all the steps you take between receiving a new order and the customer receiving their new product.
The fulfillment process usually includes the following:
picking and packaging products
labeling the order for shipment
shipping the package with a mail carrier
After you pack the products carefully to ensure that the package is safely delivered to your customer you can arrange the shipment:
Fill out the shipping label to save you time at the post office. To make the process easier you can print shipping labels and packing slips for your orders with the help of apps from the App Market such as ShipStation app, ShippingEasy app, Printout Designer app, PrintFantastic app. These apps are paid, but some of them have a free trial.
Go to a shipping company you would like to use for the order shipment, for example, USPS, and send the package.
From the store admin, go to My Sales → Orders and open the order.
Change the order fulfillment status to Shipped to let your customer know the order is on the way.
Optional: If you use delivery services that provide tracking, you can enter the tracking number at which point your customer will get an email with this tracking number.
On a final note, there is no “Save” button on the Orders page. So remember – when you mark your order as Shipped, the customer will automatically receive a shipping notification email. Be careful that you don’t accidentally mark something as shipped that hasn’t been shipped yet because you do not want the customer to get inaccurate information.