The Orders List & Order Lifecycle
Search, filter, and export your orders, and understand the numbered journey every order follows from placement to delivery.
Go to Orders in the left navigation. This is your daily command centre for everything that has been bought on your store.
The Orders list
At the top of the screen you get headline numbers:
- Today's Orders — how many new purchases arrived since midnight.
- Pending Delivery — orders still in transit or awaiting dispatch.
- Revenue This Week — total confirmed sales for the rolling seven-day window, in your store's currency.
Below the headline numbers sits the full order table.
What you can do on the list
- Search by order number or customer name, in real time.
- Filter by status — Pending, Processing, Shipped, Delivered, or Cancelled.
- Export the visible list to CSV.
- Select rows and act in bulk — see below.
Marketplace stores get a vendor filter
If your store runs as a marketplace with multiple vendors, a vendor filter and column let you view only the orders belonging to one seller, and column headers let you sort the table by date or value. This keeps marketplace admins from working through a single undivided list.
Newer dashboard skin
The vendor filter/column and column sorting described above work the same way on the newer visual skin.
Bulk actions
Tick the checkboxes on multiple rows to reveal a bulk action bar. From there you can:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Update status | Move every selected order to a new status in one step |
| Export | Download the selected orders |
| Message customers | Opens a composer to write a message addressed to the customers on the selected orders |
Message customers doesn't send yet, on the newer dashboard skin
On the newer dashboard skin, Message customers opens a working-looking composer — you can type a message and press Send, and you'll see a "Message sent" confirmation. Nothing is actually delivered to the customer yet; the send action isn't wired to email, SMS, or WhatsApp. Use the automatic status-change notifications (see below) or contact the customer directly using the details on their order for now.
Filtering the list on the newer dashboard skin (v2)
The status dropdown described above is a classic-screen control. On the newer dashboard skin the Orders list is filtered with a row of tabs instead, and each tab replaces a chunk of what the dropdown did:
| Tab | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Priority queue | Pending orders that need your attention first |
| Today | Orders placed today |
| Awaiting payment | Orders still pending payment confirmation |
| Ready to ship | Orders confirmed and ready for fulfilment |
| Earlier | Orders older than today |
| All | Every order, unfiltered |
A search box sits to the right of the tabs — it searches by order ID or customer name, the same as the classic screen's search. There is no separate status dropdown on this skin: switching tabs is how you filter.
The KPI strip
Above the tabs, four figures summarise the list at a glance:
- Today — today's order count, shown with a small trend sparkline.
- Collected — this week's revenue total.
- Awaiting you — how many orders are waiting on a decision from you (the same count as Pending Delivery above).
- Fulfilled — reserved for a fulfilled-orders count; it currently always shows a dash (–) because the backend doesn't yet report this figure.
Pagination
The order table paginates rather than showing everything at once. At the bottom of the list you can:
- Change how many rows show per page — 5, 10, 25, or 50.
- Step through pages with Previous and Next buttons.
- Read the current range (for example, "42 total · 1–10") next to the controls.
Empty states
- No orders at all — if your store has no orders yet, the list shows a "no orders yet" message with a Create first order button that opens the manual order form — see Creating an order manually below.
- No results for the current filter — if orders exist but the active tab/search combination matches none of them, the list shows a "no matches" message with a Clear filters button that resets the tab to All, clears your search, and resets any vendor/date filters in one click.
The order lifecycle — a numbered journey
Every order follows a clear, colour-coded path. A progress indicator on the order detail screen shows exactly where that order sits right now.
Pending
The customer has placed the order. Payment may still be processing. No action needed yet — the system is confirming the transaction.
Processing
Payment is confirmed. The order is in your hands: pick, pack, and prepare it for dispatch. This is your working state.
Shipped
You have handed the parcel to a carrier and booked a shipment. A tracking number is attached. The customer receives an automatic notification.
Delivered
The carrier has confirmed delivery. The order is complete.
Newer dashboard skin shows a 5-stage timeline
The order detail screen on the newer dashboard skin displays this same journey as a 5-stage timeline with a timestamp against each stage: Placed, Paid, Fulfilled, Shipped, Delivered. Placed and Paid together correspond to the classic screen's Pending → Processing step (an order becomes Paid once payment is confirmed); Fulfilled marks the order as ready to ship, ahead of the Shipped stage. The underlying statuses are the same — this skin just shows the payment/fulfilment split as its own stages instead of folding them into "Processing."
Two alternate paths exist outside the main flow:
- Cancelled — the order was stopped before fulfilment. The cancellation reason is recorded and displayed on the order. The customer is notified automatically. If payment was already collected, a refund can be started from the same screen.
- Returned — the customer sent the item back. The return state sits alongside the refund workflow — see Refunds.
Tip
Every status change (order placed, shipped, cancelled, refund processed) triggers an automatic message to the customer by email, SMS, and WhatsApp using the contact details they gave at checkout. You do not need to send these yourself.
Quick reference — order statuses
| Status | What it means | Who can see it |
|---|---|---|
| Pending | Order placed; payment being confirmed | Merchant & customer |
| Processing | Payment confirmed; being picked & packed | Merchant & customer |
| Shipped | Handed to carrier; tracking number active | Merchant & customer |
| Delivered | Carrier confirmed delivery | Merchant & customer |
| Cancelled | Order stopped; reason recorded | Merchant & customer |
| Returned | Item sent back by customer | Merchant (refund handled separately) |
Tracking numbers and invoices from the list
You don't have to open every order to move it forward:
- Tracking-number entry happens from the order detail screen once a shipment is booked — see Order Detail: Status, Cancellation & Fulfilment Handoff.
- Invoice generation — open any order and use the invoice preview to get a fully formatted PDF: your store's branding, the customer's billing address, a line-item table, tax breakdown, and totals.
- CSV/PDF export — export the whole visible list, or generate a PDF invoice for a single order.
Creating an order manually (newer dashboard skin)
v2-only
Manual order creation is available on the newer dashboard skin. The classic Orders screen has no + New order button — orders there are still created only when a customer completes checkout on your storefront.
On the newer dashboard skin, click + New order at the top of the Orders list (or Create first order from the empty state) to open the order form. Use it for phone orders, in-person sales, or any sale you need to record on the customer's behalf.
Pick the customer
Choose Existing customer and search by name, email, or phone to attach the order to a registered shopper, or choose Guest and enter the buyer's first name, last name, email, and (optionally) phone number directly. Use one or the other, not both.
Add items
Search your catalog, pick a product (and a variant, if it has one), and set the quantity. A stock hint shows how many units are available — type more than that and the quantity is automatically capped and you're notified. Stock is re-checked when you submit, so this hint isn't a guarantee if inventory changes in the meantime. Add as many line items as the order needs; each shows its unit price and line total, priced from your live catalog (you can't override prices when creating the order this way).
Enter the shipping address
Fill in the delivery address — name, phone, address lines, city, state, postal code, and country. This is required for every manual order.
Set the billing address (optional)
Leave Billing same as shipping ticked to reuse the delivery address, or untick it to enter a separate billing address.
Apply a coupon (optional)
Enter a coupon code if the order qualifies — it's validated and redeemed the same way a customer's own coupon would be at checkout.
Choose how the order was paid
Pick Cash on Delivery if payment hasn't happened yet, or Manually paid if you already collected payment outside the platform (bank transfer, cash in person, a payment link, and so on). For a manually-paid order you can add a payment reference and a short note — both optional, useful for reconciling against your own records later.
Add shipping cost and a note, then create the order
Optionally set a shipping amount (defaults to zero) and an admin note for your own records, then submit. On success you're taken straight to the new order's detail page, where it behaves exactly like a customer-placed order — same statuses, same fulfilment and refund tools.
What can go wrong
If a product or variant no longer exists, if a chosen customer can't be found, if the requested quantity now exceeds stock, or if the coupon code isn't valid, the form shows an inline error instead of creating a partial order — nothing is saved until every check passes. If your plan doesn't include manual order creation, the form shows an upgrade prompt instead.
Serviceability isn't checked on manual orders
Unlike customer checkout, a manual order doesn't block on a non-serviceable delivery pincode — you are often self-shipping or hand-delivering these orders yourself, so this won't stop you from creating one.
Next steps
- Order Detail: Status, Cancellation & Fulfilment Handoff — everything you can do once you open a single order.
- Refunds — the full refund approval workflow.