Orders
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Orders are records of product or services that have been ordered by the customer. Quotes are a particular type of order in the system that do not have a price listed against them. Orders are usually created via a customer proceeding to checkout on your online shop. However, you can also manually create an order.
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Creating an Order
To create an Order, 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 country's 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.
Order Status
What Is the Order Status Field?
The 'Order Status' is a field that can be used for your own order tracking needs......it does not have any logic behind it and does not 'link' with the Payment processing side of the order.
Most online shops receive payments immediately, and thus our 'Default' setting for this is 'Payment Recieved'
But, if you are using COD or other payment options that are not immediate, you may like to adjust this....a possible scenario would be to set the default status - 'New Order Recieved'. You could then add other status types, such as 'Payment Confirmed', 'Item Delivered', 'Customer Followed Up', etc.
This will allow you to filter your orders based on their 'Order Status'.
Changing the default status for orders
To change the default status for your orders, which is the status that is automatically applied to an order when the new one is created, you need to go to any order attached to any of the contacts, click on Edit button on the bottom of the window and click on the small box next to the status dropdown.
You should now see the small window with order available order statuses.
You then need to click on the name of the status you wish to make into a default status, tick Default checkbox and click Save button.
Your order status should now have (Default) next to it.
Please note that you can add new order statuses on this screen and remove the unwanted statuses.
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 dropdown 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
Recurring Orders
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
How to create a recurring order
You may want some orders to have a recurring invoice, if you are a selling a subscription for example. This is easy to do! When editing an order click Recurrence/Direct Debit. Set the Recurring Status to enabled, then choose the cycle type for the period of time to elapse before each recurrence (daily, weekly, monthly etc). Finally choose the Next Invoice Date, after which the recurrence cycle will begin, and choose a date for the recurrence to end.
Please Note: Currently there is no automated means of creating a recurring billing with different dollar amounts. To achieve this, you will need to firstly create the recurring order (i.e.monthly payment). The next step is to change the recurring amount manually once the first month payment has been made. To do this you will need to log in to the contacts details in the CRM, and go to the 'Orders' screen,delete the order and create a new recurring order with the new dollar amount. To do this, click on the 'Create another order' link on the right hand side of the orders screen and enter the relevant recurring details and amount.
Every time a new order is created as a result of the recurring orders, a new invoice will be generated and sent to the customer.
Payments
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.
There are 3 payment statuses:
- Fail - Gateway has failed to process the payment and has returned an error to the system.
- Successful - Payment was collected and processed by the gateway.
- Pending - If the is a Pending Payment that means that the payment was not collected by the gateway. It indicated that you are processing the payments offline or that the payment method this customer has used was a COD, cheque or similar payment. Once you receive the payment from the customer, to turn the pending payment into a successful payment, you need to delete the pending payment and apply the successful payment as per above instructions.
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.
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.
Adding new statuses to order or editing an existing status option
When you click edit button on the order, you can choose the status for that order form the dropdown. However, sometimes you may want to add a new status or change an existing status. You can add your own status by clicking on the small box next to the status dropdown.
The new window will then come up where you can click Add New to add the new status or you can click on the name of the existing statuses to change their name or delete them. The new status you add here will become available to the whole site and not just this order.
