# Sales and orders: an overview

Sales and orders

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](https://grandnode.com/sales-orders-list) and [Order details](https://grandnode.com/sales-order-details). |
| **Shipments** | All shipments across orders; mark them shipped or delivered, print packaging slips. See [Shipments](https://grandnode.com/sales-shipments). |
| **Merchandise returns** | Return requests submitted by customers. See [Merchandise returns](https://grandnode.com/sales-merchandise-returns). |
| **Payment Transactions** | One record per payment attempt: mark as paid, capture, refund or void. See [Payments and refunds](https://grandnode.com/sales-payments). |
| **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](https://grandnode.com/sales-checkout-attributes). |
| **Order status** | The names of the order statuses and any extra statuses you add. See [Order, payment and shipping status](https://grandnode.com/sales-order-statuses). |

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 Orders list in the GrandNode admin panel with four orders, their order, payment and shipping statuses, customer and total](https://grandnode.com/Plugins/Theme.GrandNodeCom/Content/kb/sales/orders-list.webp)

Sales → Orders: every order with its three statuses at a glance.

### 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:

1. 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*.
2. 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*.
3. You create a shipment for the items and mark it shipped, later delivered. The shipping status follows.
4. 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.
5. 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](https://grandnode.com/sales-order-statuses).

### 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](https://grandnode.com/docs-store-panel) and [Vendor panel](https://grandnode.com/docs-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

- [Finding orders: list, filters and export](https://grandnode.com/sales-orders-list)
- [Order details](https://grandnode.com/sales-order-details)
- [What the customer sees](https://grandnode.com/sales-customer-orders)

- [Web page](https://grandnode.com/sales-overview)