Manage orders

How to receive, adjust, accept, prepare, ship, decline and undo your customers' orders.

Every order a customer confirms lands in your queue under Orders and moves through these states: Needs action, Accepted, In preparation, On its way and Completed. There is also Declined. Each state has its own tab. Here is how to take an order from one to the next.

The order queue

• Orders are sorted by date, newest first, on every tab. If there are none yet you will see No orders yet.
• With Queue view you choose between Cards and Table.
• You can tick several orders and press Accept or Decline with the number of orders chosen. There is a limit per go, and if some cannot change, the app tells you how many were left unchanged and why.
• The filter Only orders with backorder lines keeps just the orders that have lines with no stock. It is explained in Pending orders and stock.

Receive and review an order

1. Open Orders. A fresh order appears on the Needs action tab and, inside the order, carries the badge New.
2. If you set an address under Where we send your orders in Settings, you also get an email notice when the order is placed.
3. Open the order. At the top you see its progress and the date of each step. With View as customer you see the order as your customer sees it, read only.
4. While the order needs action you can change it. To change a quantity, type it and leave the box: it saves by itself, and Enter moves to the next line. Press Remove to delete a line. If you lower a quantity you can tick Backorder the rest so that what is missing stays on backorder. The order is then marked Adjusted and the history shows under Changes.
5. On each line you see how much stock is left after accepting. If it is not enough you see how many units are short, and Fit to with the quantity you do have fills in the value for you.

If the customer changes their order after placing it and it still needs action, the change is recorded under Changes as Changed by the customer. With Restore the previous version you get back what it was before, and with Bring back the customer's change the opposite. Before you confirm you see which lines change and which version is current.

Accept, prepare, ship and complete

1. Press Accept. If accepting would take a product below zero, the app warns you with Accept this order anyway? and you decide: Accept anyway or Go back.
2. When you start packing it, press Start preparing.
3. When the parcel leaves, tap Mark on its way. The order then reads On its way for you and your buyer. If some lines are still unsupplied, it asks Ship with backorders outstanding? and you can choose Ship anyway.
4. Once the customer has it, press Mark completed.

In the Payment section of the order you can note whether it has been paid with Mark paid and Mark unpaid. The order then shows Paid or Unpaid. It is only a mark of your own: cataloop does not take payment or ship anything.

Change an order that is already accepted

An accepted order can no longer be edited box by box. The shop owner uses Change this accepted order and Edit quantities to lower, remove or move quantities to backorder, or raise them up to what the customer ordered. Nothing is saved until you press Save changes. Before saving, the app tells you how many units go back on the shelf or come off it and whether the buyer will be emailed.

Decline and undo

• Decline asks for confirmation (Decline this order?, with the option Keep it). You can only decline an order that needs action, is accepted or is in preparation; one that is on its way or completed is closed to it. A declined order stays on the list, can be read afterwards and cannot be accepted again.
• Move back to Needs action undoes an acceptance and gives the stock back. Only the shop owner can do it, and the buyer is not told.
• A more advanced order can be moved one step back with Back to Accepted, Back to In preparation or Back to On its way. No stock moves on those steps.
• Undo the decline brings back a declined order. If the decline had put stock back, the app tells you how many units it takes again.
• Each of these actions is recorded under Changes with who did it.

Good to know

• Stock moves when you accept, and only if the setting Take stock when an order is accepted in Settings is on. Details in Control your stock.
• The buyer gets an email when you accept, when you decline and when you ship. They also get an adjustment email each time you save a quantity change on an order that needs action, when you use Change this accepted order, and when you accept an order and that acceptance changes lines (in that case, before the acceptance email). It is sent only when the change alters something. Preparing, completing and moving back send nothing. With no email on the order, nothing is sent. The demo shop never sends email.
• The buyer sees the state of their order in these words: Received, Accepted, Being prepared, On its way, Complete and Declined. More in the buyer's orders page.
• On each order you can download the customer's copy and, for the warehouse, the delivery note with Download delivery note. See Order confirmation and delivery note.
• On Home, the Sales by product row sums up the units, orders and net of each product over a date range, with Export to Excel. It counts accepted, in preparation, on its way and completed orders. It never counts declined orders or backorder lines you have not supplied yet.
• Lines with no stock are handled separately; see Pending orders and stock.