Process Finalsite Store orders

When a customer buys from your online store, the order will appear in My Sales > Orders and you will receive a notification email.

The Orders page is where you can view and manage all your orders. You’ll have access to all the order details, and you can search for orders or filter them by different categories.

Orders for digital products or gift cards are automatically fulfilled. When an order for physical products is placed, however, you’ll need to fulfill that order. This article covers what happens when you receive, review, and fulfill an order.

Receiving an order

When you receive an online order:

• The Orders page will display the new order as soon as your customer has placed it.
• The customer will receive an order confirmation email.
• You’ll receive a new order notification by email. The email will come from no-reply@shopsettings.com with the subject line “[Your store name], new order #X”.

Reviewing an order

To review your orders, go to the Orders page and open the order to view its details. In the order details, you’ll see:

• Order #

• Date and time the order was placed

• Payment and shipping status

• Admin order notes

• Items

• Quantities

• Customer email

• Shipping method

• Payment details

• Shipping address

• Customer order comments

• Shipping costs

• Handling fee

• Tax

• Discount

• Subtotal

• Order total

Payment statuses

Before you start processing a new order, we highly recommend that you double-check whether you’ve received the payment for the order.

A Paid order status means that your customer selected an online payment option and the third-party provider successfully processed the payment. Congrats: you just got paid! Now you can prepare the order and ship it to the buyer.

An Awaiting payment order status can mean one of two things:

1. Your customer selected an offline payment method, and you need to contact them to arrange payment.
2. Your customer’s online payment was not processed. Open the order details page and go to the Payment section to view the detailed payment summary and the reason the payment failed.

If an order status is Cancelled, that indicates the payment gateway could not authorize or charge the customer's credit card, or that you have cancelled the order. Stock levels will automatically increase (if stock control is set up).

A Refunded order means full payment has been transferred back to the customer, while a Partially Refunded order status indicates part of a payment has been transferred back to the customer. The actual transfer takes place within your payment gateway, but you should always update the status of the order, as well. Learn more about how to process refunds.

Fulfilling an order

After you’ve received the payment from the customer, and you have all the necessary details, you can change the order status to Processing and start fulfilling the order.

The “order fulfillment” process includes all the steps you take between your store receiving a new order and the customer receiving their new product(s), including preparing, packing, and delivering the items.

Shipping an order

If the customer has selected a shipping option for their order, the fulfillment process usually includes: picking and packaging products; labeling the order for shipment; and shipping the package with a mail carrier.

After you pack the products carefully to ensure that the package is safely delivered to your customer, you can arrange the shipment:

1. Fill out the shipping label in advance.
2. Go to a shipping company you would like to use for the order shipment, such as USPS, and send the package.
3. From the store admin, go to My Sales > Orders and open the order.
4. Change the order fulfillment status to Shipped. If you’ve opted to send status change notification emails, this will let your customer know the order is on the way.
5. If you use delivery services that provide tracking, you can also enter the tracking number, and your customer will get an email with this tracking number.

Note: There is no “Save” button on the Orders page. When you mark your order as “Shipped,” the customer will automatically receive a shipping notification email. Be careful that you don’t accidentally mark something as shipped that hasn’t been shipped yet, because you do not want the customer to receive inaccurate information.

Order pickup

If you selected order pickup as an option in the Store Intake form, your store checkout will be configured to let the customer schedule a convenient time to pick up the products they have purchased, based on the lead time and availability you indicated.

When a new pickup order is placed in your store, it will be indicated on your Orders page with the In-store Pickup icon.

Prepare the order to be picked up according to your store’s own procedures. To inform the customer that their order is awaiting pickup, simply change its fulfillment status to Ready for Pickup. The customer will be notified by email at the address they included in the order.

Send home with student

If your store is located on a school campus and your customers are parents, the easiest way to fulfill your orders may be to send them home with the student.

Customers will provide the information required to connect an order with their student, based on the instructions you included on the Store Intake form. This information will be included on the order details page in the “Customer’s comments” section.

Once you’ve prepared the order and left it in the care of the responsible student, you may want to change the status of the order to Delivered.

Additional fulfillment statuses

If your order has a payment status of Cancelled or Refunded, you can use the Delivery Canceled fulfillment status to indicate that you will not ship any products. If a customer’s order has been Refunded or Partially Refunded, the corresponding fulfillment status Returned may be applicable.

Refer to Manage Finalsite Store orders for more information about editing, canceling, refunding, and deleting orders.