Sales and orders: an overview
Everything that happens after a customer clicks Confirm at checkout is handled in the Sales menu of the admin panel. An order is created with its items, prices, addresses and payment method frozen at that moment. From then on your staff take payment, ship the goods, answer questions in order notes and, when needed, accept merchandise returns or refund money. This article maps the screens involved and explains the life of an order, so the rest of this module is easier to follow.
Where to find it
Open the admin panel (/admin) and click Sales in the left bar. The menu contains:
| Menu item | What you do there |
|---|---|
| Orders | Search and open orders; change statuses, edit items and totals, print invoices. See Finding orders and Order details. |
| Shipments | All shipments across orders; mark them shipped or delivered, print packaging slips. See Shipments. |
| Merchandise returns | Return requests submitted by customers. See Merchandise returns. |
| Payment Transactions | One record per payment attempt: mark as paid, capture, refund or void. See Payments and refunds. |
| Order's tags | Keywords you attach to orders to group them (for example wholesale or priority). |
| Checkout Attributes | Extra questions asked at checkout, such as gift wrapping. See Checkout attributes. |
| Order status | The names of the order statuses and any extra statuses you add. See Order, payment and shipping status. |
Three related screens live in other menus: Dashboard → Active carts and wishlists (what customers have in their carts right now), Marketing → Gift vouchers, and the sales reports under Reports. Behaviour such as "complete the order only after delivery" or "allow merchandise returns" is set in Settings → Sales settings.
The life of an order
Every order carries three independent statuses. Keeping them apart is the key to understanding GrandNode:
- Order status – where the order stands as a whole: Pending, Processing, Complete or Cancelled.
- Payment status – whether the money has arrived: Pending, Authorized, Paid, Partially paid, Partially refunded, Refunded, Voided.
- Shipping status – whether the goods have left: Shipping not required, Pending, Prepared to shipped, Partially shipped, Shipped, Delivered.
You normally change only the payment and shipping side; GrandNode derives the order status from them. A typical order goes like this:
- The customer places the order. Order status Pending, payment status Pending (or Authorized/Paid if an online payment method already charged the card), shipping status Pending if any item needs shipping, otherwise Shipping not required.
- Payment arrives – automatically from a payment plugin, or you click Mark as paid for cash on delivery or bank transfer. The order moves to Processing.
- You create a shipment for the items and mark it shipped, later delivered. The shipping status follows.
- When the order is paid and shipped (or delivered, depending on the Complete order when delivered setting), GrandNode sets it to Complete and emails the customer.
- After delivery the customer may request a merchandise return from their account, and you may refund all or part of the payment.
The exact rules are in Order, payment and shipping status.
Who sees which orders
Administrators see all orders of all stores. A store manager working in the store panel (/store) sees only the orders of their store, and a vendor in the vendor panel (/vendor) sees only orders containing their products, with only their own items. Those panels are described in Store panel and Vendor panel; this module describes the full admin panel.
Tips and common mistakes
- Do not use Change status on the order to "mark it paid" – it changes only the label. Use Mark as paid on the payment transaction so the paid date, notifications and loyalty points are handled.
- An order whose products all have shipping disabled shows Shipping not required and has no Shipments tab; it becomes Complete as soon as it is paid.
- Orders are never really removed: Delete hides the order and returns stock, but an order with shipments cannot be deleted or cancelled.
Related
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