Guide to processing orders

When a customer buys from your online store, the order appears in My Sales → Orders in your Sauecommerce admin. You also receive a notification email or a push notification in the Sauecmmerce mobile app.

On the Orders page, you can view and manage the order. You will have access to order details: payment and shipping information, items ordered, a customer name, contact information, billing address, and other.

When an order for physical products is placed, you need to fulfill that order. Digital products and gift cards, though, are fulfilled automatically: after paying a customer receives an email with a link to download the file or a gift card code. Here are the general steps you go through when processing physical orders:

How do I find out about a new order?

Viewing order details

Fulfilling the order

Informing customers about shipped orders

When you receive an order:

• You get the order notification email from notifications@sauecommerce.com. The email subject is “[Your store name], new order #X”.
• In your Sauecommerce app, you get a push notification about a new order.
• A new order appears on the Orders page in your Sauecommerce admin, or on the Orders tab in your Sauecommerce app.
• The customer receives an order confirmation email. Depending on your store settings, you can also receive a copy of that email.

On the Orders page, you can view the list of orders and get an overview of order details: purchased items, delivery address, payment and shipping details, customer name and contact, and more.

Each order has a payment and fulfillment status. The payment status depends on whether a shopper paid online or chose a manual payment method. The fulfillment status for all new orders with physical goods is the Awaiting Processing:

Before you start fulfillment, check the order’s payment status:

• The Paid status means that your customer paid online and the payment is successfully processed.
• The Awaiting Payment status means that either your customer chose to pay manually, or the online payment failed. Open the order details page to get a detailed payment summary in the Payment details section.

Further reading:

Changing the order status →

Adding order-related notes for staff →

Editing orders →

After viewing the order details, you or your staff need to pack and ship goods to your customer. This process is referred to as “order fulfillment” and includes all the steps you take to deliver the order to the customer. The fulfilling process is slightly different for local delivery and self-pickup.

The fulfillment process usually includes:

1. Picking up goods from the warehouse or inventory.
2. Packing products.
3. Buying shipping labels. To save you time on filling out the label at the post office, you can buy pre-filled shipping labels in your Sauecommerce admin (selected countries and carriers) or with the help of apps from the Sauecommerce App Market.
4. Delivering the package to your shipping company’s office or scheduling a pickup on your carrier’s website.

Further reading:

Packing items to reduce shipping costs →
Using packaging as a marketing tool →

After you head the package over to the carrier, the last step is to let your customers know that their order is on its way. You need to change your order status, and shoppers will automatically get an email about their order being shipped. Alternatively, you can send SMS notifications by using one of the apps from the Sauecommerce App Market.

To notify a customer about the shipped order:

1. From your Sauecommerce admin, go to My Sales → Orders, open the order or select several orders in bulk.
2. Change the order fulfillment status to Shipped.
3. (optional) Enter the tracking number if your delivery service provides one. Your customer will get a notification with this tracking number. They will also see the tracking number in their customer account.

Further reading:

Adding staff accounts to manage orders →