When a user put their first item into their online cart, a sales order is created. The state of the sales order is set to "in progress" until they start the checkout process, which sets the state of the sales order to "in checkout" and if they complete the checkout, the state of the sales order is set to "checkout completed".
For sales orders that do not involve physical products you may not need to do anything after a checkout has happened. For sales orders that do have physical processing, you may have several steps to fulfill the order such as waiting for an order from your vendor or actually shipping the order.
You should use the sales order admin page to review and process your orders. When you do something significant to the sales order like ship the products, you should update its status so that the customer can be notified of updates to their order.
On the left side of the admin page is the sales order grid with the latest orders on the top. The grid shows the following columns:
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Date - the date the customer completed the initial puchase.
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Order # - the sales order #.
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User name - the login I'd of the user when they did the purchase. If anonymous purchases are allowed then this would show anonymous.
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Order contact - the name supplied for the deliery contact.
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Status - the current status of the invoice.
As you select sales orders in the grid, its details are shown in the tab area on the right side of the page.
Order Details Tab
This area shows the main details of the sales order. You can edit only some of the items on this page. The status and contact info can be changed. Everything else is readonly.
The sales order item grid shows the items purchased in the order and their quantities. Selecting an item in the grid will display its details below that, including any option form information.
The contact information shows the name and location they want their order delivered to if they ordered physical products that need delivery. This display always shows all the fields that are available for contact information on a sales order. If you setup the site to show less contact information during checkout, only those fields would be populated by the user. You can control how much contact information you want to get from users in the Site's general settings admin page.
Payment Info Tab
If users can pay for their order during checkout, the payment info tab will show the payment processor used and other information about the transaction such as approval code, date of the transaction and the amount actually approved. You cannot edit this information.
Shipping Info tab
When the sales order has items to be shipped, this tab shows the delivery method they picked, the shipping quote used and the handling fees that were applied. It also shows the shipping boxes used for the order in the shipping box grid on the left side on the tab area. As you select a box from the order, the items that were calculated to go in that box are shown.
It is good to pack the order as shown in this tab area. As long as the dimensions and weight of the products are accurate, the boxes it recommends to use should be the right way to pack it. If one box out of several is lost during shipping, you can use this information to help determine what was lost out of the order.