Tutorial 3.3: Customer orders

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Searching for placed Orders

In order to find orders which have been placed on your website you can either select the item from the Life feed of your site, however if the order has been removed from thew live feed due to customer activity, you will need to search for the order.

In order to locate a previous order, Select the Customers > Orders option within the Admin system

You can then select to filter orderes based on the General and / or Status filters

Once you have selected the relevant filters and selected the 'filter' button, a list of the results will be shown. To view the order you are interested in, select 'View' next to the applicable record (additionally, if you wish to open multiple orders to view, you can 'Right Clink (or Control Click) on the view option, and select 'display in new window).

Placing orders

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Automated Orders

When an order is created via your online shop, several things are automated.

• An order will be created.
• The orders details and products will be filled in as per the customers order.
• When using a payment gateway is set up,
  • If payment succeeds, an invoice will be generated and emailed to the customer.
  • If payment fails then no invoice is generated, but an order is still created.

Naturally for automated orders you can still edit the order if required.

Manually Creating an Order

The main way for Orders to be generated within the system is by customers stepping through the Online Shop module if it is set up on your site, as described in Tutorial 2.

To create an Order manually within the Admin console, go to the Customer Orders tab under the customer record. Click Create a new Order.

Most fields are self explanatory and you need to fill them out accordingly. Some that require special mention include:

• Pricing and Currency. If you have set up pricing and tax codes for different countries, this drop down allows you to choose which countrys pricing to choose from
• Status. This allows you to set the status of the order. You can add your own status by clicking on the small box next to the status dropdown.

• Generate Invoice. When creating an order manually, an invoice is not automatically generated. When you have added the products and are happy with the order you can click to generate the invoice.

Once you have entered the orders details, click Save. See the next section for adding products to an order.

Adding and Editing Products in an Order

Go to the customers record, and click on Orders, then click on the order you'd like to add products to. Under the Product section you'll see the list of existing products. Select products from the drop-down menu by selecting a product name. To add more products click on the Add Another Product link.

You can easily edit each product as you add it to the order. Enter a short description if desired, modify the number of units for that product, and confirm or edit the price per unit. Tax Rate is automatically retrieved based on the Pricing & Currency country you chose earlier.

Click Save when complete.

Editing an Order

You can edit an order at any stage by clicking the Edit button. All the fields will then become editable

Reoccurring Orders

You may want some orders to have a re-occurring invoice, if you are a selling a subscription for example.

To achieve this, when editing an order, select Reoccurrence/Direct Debit. Set the Recurring Status to enabled, then choose the cycle type for the period of time to elapse before each reoccurrence (daily, weekly, monthly etc). Finally choose the Next Invoice Date, after which the re-occurrence cycle will begin, and choose a date for the re-occurrence to end.

Important: Not all payment gateways support recurring billing

Not all payment gateways support this feature. Your Payment Gateway must support recurring billing if you wish to create recurring orders to charge your customers periodically. For a list of the gateways which support this, see HERE

Making Payments on Orders

You can make payments on orders if you desire. This simply marks the order as paid or partially paid by the amount you enter' ' even if you choose credit card it will not contact your payment gateway to make a payment. That means if you make payments this way you should already have actually received the payment.

Select Payments -> Make Payment and then choose your Payment Method, the Payment Amount (if it is the full amount, click the small box next to Payment amount to copy the full amount in), the Payment Date and the Payment Description (i.e. half payment, deposit etc). Click the Make Payment button to complete.

Order Workflows

Order workflows are like case workflows. You can designate a particular workflow to fire when orders are created by going to Admin -> Manage Workflows. Select the workflow you wish to use and check the Orders checkbox. When a workflow is linked to orders all your online orders will trigger that workflow, and the workflow history will be recorded under the Order Workflows heading.

* Link to legacy reference articles on the Wiki that relate to your tutorial (from Mario's existing articles that he put in the spreadsheet