Order Statuses

An order also has a Status. Order statuses let you know how far along the order is, starting with “Pending payment” and ending with “Completed.” The following order statuses are used:

• Pending payment — Order received, no payment initiated. Awaiting payment (unpaid).
• Failed — Payment failed or was declined (unpaid) or requires authentication (SCA). Note that this status may not show immediately and instead show as Pending until verified (e.g., PayPal).
• Processing — Payment received (paid) and stock has been reduced; order is awaiting fulfillment. All product orders require processing, except those that only contain products which are both Virtual and Downloadable.
• Completed — Order fulfilled and complete – requires no further action.
• On hold — Awaiting payment – stock is reduced, but you need to confirm payment.
• Canceled — Canceled by an admin or the customer – stock is increased, no further action required.
• Refunded — Refunded by an admin – no further action required.
• Authentication required — Awaiting action by the customer to authenticate the transaction and/or complete SCA requirements.

Visual Diagram to Illustrate Order Statuses

This visual representation follows an order through its statuses from “Pending payment” to “Completed”, “Canceled” or “Refunded.”

Order Statuses and Payment Gateways

More about how order statuses relate to payment gateways in the Troubleshooting section.

Order Statuses and Emails

More about the different emails that are automatically sent at Email Settings.

Viewing and Managing Multiple Orders

Orders Overview

When a shop starts taking orders, the Orders management page begins to fill up. Go to: WooCommerce > Orders.

Each row displays several details. Some are there by default, others can be added. These are the available options:

• Order number and customer name,
• Date of purchase,
• Order status,
• Billing address,
• Shipping address,
• Purchase total, and
• Actions.

To change these columns:

• Go to: WooCommerce > Orders.
• Select Screen Options in the top right corner.
• Select which Columns to show.
• Select how many Items you want to be displayed on each page.
• Then Apply.

Filter and Arrange Orders

Filter orders by Date (month/year) or by registered customer.

• Select the month, or search for a customer.
• Select Filter.

Arrange orders in ascending or descending order by Order number, Date or Total by select the heading.

Note that the “Total” column does not take the refunded amount into consideration.

Click the order number and customer name to see the Single Order page, where you can also Edit order details, Update Status, and Add Notes. More details on that in Viewing and Editing Single Orders.

Previewing Orders

Order rows have a Preview “eye.”

Clicking Preview opens a Modal, containing the order number, order status, billing details, payment method, shipping details, shipping method, items ordered, and the option to change the order status.

Order Statuses in the Overview

Order Statuses are color-coded and descriptive.

• Canceled – Grey
• Completed – Blue
• Failed – Red
• On Hold – Orange
• Pending Payment – Grey
• Processing – Green
• Refunded – Grey

Order Actions

Hovering over an order Status displays Notes made on the order.

At the end of a row are shortcut buttons to quickly mark orders as Processing or Complete.

Viewing and Editing a Single Order

From the Single Order page not only can you view all order data, but also edit and update.

• Change the order status.
• Edit order items – modify the product, prices, and taxes.
• Stock – Reduce and restore stock for an order
• Order Actions – Email order details to customer (handy if manually creating an order for your customers) or Regenerate download permissions
• Modify product Meta to edit product variations by removing and adding meta
• Apply coupons. You will need to know the coupon code to apply to the order. Coupon usage counts are tracked, and coupons can also be removed from orders. Note: the order must be unpaid for coupons to have an affect
• Add fee. You can enter an amount or percentage to add a fee to an order. Negative fees will apportion taxes between all other items, and will not make the cart total go below zero

Order Details

Viewing Order Details

The Order Details panel you can view:

• Order number
• Payment details
• Order date and time
• Order status
• Customer details:
  • Username and email, together with a link to view their profile and other purchases the customer may have had in the past
  • Billing details
  • Shipping details

Editing Order Details

Most of the details in this section can be updated and/or changes.

• To change the date and time, use the dropdown date selector and the quantity selectors for the time.
• To change the status, choose the right status in the dropdown.
• To change the customer, select the current customer and search for the new customer.

Under “Billing” and “Shipping”, several other details can be changed. In order to do so, select the pencil icon next to each of them.

• Under “Billing”, the following things can be changed:
  • Billing address — this can also be loaded from the customer’s profile by selecting “Load billing address”
  • Email
  • Phone number
  • Payment method and details
• Under “Shipping”, the following things can be changed:
  • Shipping address — this can also be loaded from the customer’s profile or copied from the billing address
  • Customer provided note

Once you’ve made the necessary changes, select Update to update the order.

Order Items and Totals

Viewing Order Items

The next panel on the order page is the Order Items panel. This contains the product items, the shipping details, and the order summary.

• Each product item row lists:
  • Product image
  • Product name
  • Single product Cost
  • Quantity
  • Total (Cost x Quantity, with discounts taken into consideration)
  • Taxes
• Below that, the shipping details are displayed. This will include:
  • Shipping method
  • Boxed items
  • Total cost
  • Taxes
• The last section contains an overview of the order costs. This section will change if an order is refunded. By default, it will include:
  • Items subtotal — cost excluding tax
  • Coupon(s) — amount deducted based on the use of coupons; the coupons used are displayed left in this section
  • Shipping — the shipping cost for the order
  • Taxes — the amount of taxes for the whole order; this will be replaced by the tax code applied to the order
  • Order total — the total of the above costs
  • Finally, below the line, an overview of what is paid and the fees taken by payment gateways

Editing or Adding Order Items

Apart from refunding, order items can not be edited, unless the order status is “Pending payment”, or “On hold.”

Product items. Select the pencil icon next to a product line to edit.

The following product items can be edited:

• Add Meta — Add and remove meta to change product variable options.
• Quantity — Number of items the customer is purchasing.
• Total — Line price and line tax before pre-tax discounts.
• Tax — Tax cost. For example, if a customer is tax-exempt you may want to remove the taxes.

Other actions. Next, you can do four actions at the bottom of this window:

• Add item(s) — this will show you six new options:
  • Add product(s) — Add additional products to the order.
  • Add fee — Add an additional fee, such as gift wrapping.
  • Add shipping — Add a shipping cost. When you’ve done this, select the pencil icon to update the name, the method, the cost, and the tax.
  • Add tax — Add an additional tax code to every section in the order.
  • Cancel — Cancel if you do not want to make any changes.
  • Save — Save once the changes are made.
• Once you’ve done this, select Recalculate to make sure all the changes are reflected in the order totals.

• Apply coupon — If your customer forgot to add the coupon could or you want to reward the customer before they pay, selecting this option will show a modal that allows you to apply a coupon code.
• Refund — to refund the customer. For more information about Manual and Automatic Refunds, see WooCommerce Refunds.

Custom Fields

To add custom meta fields, use the Custom Fields metabox:

Order Notes

The Order Notes panel displays notes attached to the order and can be used for storing event details, such as payment results or reducing stock levels, or adding notes to the order for customers to view. Some payment gateways also add notes for debugging.

The following note types are possible:

• Purple: System status notices, such as payment gateway details.
• Grey: General status updates, such as status changes or private notes. Customers do not see these notes but may receive notification of them, e.g., when the status changes from processing to completed, an email may be sent (depending on your settings).
• Blue: Notes to the customer. Customers receive notes via email but can view them by viewing an order, or using the WooCommerce order tracking page.

Notes can be a powerful tool for communicating with customers or other store managers. Need to add a tracking number for shipping? Is stock delayed? Add a customer note, and they are automatically notified.

To add a note,

• Use the textarea to add the content of the note.
• Select Private note or Note to customer in the dropdown.
• Select Add.

Manually Adding an Order

To add an order:

1. Go to: WooCommerce > Orders.
2. Use Add New at the top of the page. The Single Order page appears.
3. Input customer details, add line items, apply coupons, apply fees and calculate totals. These are the same as the Editing or Adding Order Items.
4. Set a status for the new order, e.g., If it needs to be paid, use “Pending payment.”
5. Save.

Use the Order Actions dropdown to Email order details to the customer with payment instructions.

Paying for an Order

Orders that are “Pending payment” can be paid for through the payment link.

As the shop manager, you can find this link on the order overview:

• If the customer is a Guest, anyone with the right link will be able to view the payment page and pay for the order.
• If the customer is registered on your site,
  • Only this customer will be able to see the payment link once they are logged in.
  • The customer can also find the order in: My Account > Orders.

If the customer is assigned to the order, they will be asked to log in before paying:

• If you are the store owner and wish to pay on behalf of the customer, consider using User Switching (not endorsed by WooCommerce.com) to log in to the customer’s account and complete the payment as them.

Removing Personal Data

Starting with WooCommerce 3.4+, it is possible to remove customer data.

• Go to: WooCommerce > Settings > Accounts & Privacy.
• Enable Allow personal data to be removed in bulk from orders.
• Save changes.

This option is now available for orders:

• Go to: WooCommerce > Orders.
• Select the orders that need personal data removed.
• Select Bulk Actions > Remove personal data.
• Select Apply.

Please note, that once you press Apply this will remove personal data with no further warning. Orders will appear on the Orders screen like this:

On an individual order, data is updated like this:

• Failed, pending, and canceled orders which get cleaned up will be moved to the trash.
• Completed orders which get cleaned up will be anonymized so sales stats are unaffected (as above).
• Inactive accounts will be deleted. An inactive account is one which has not been logged in to, or which has not placed orders, for the specified time.

Personal data removal can be automatically associated with account erasure requests. WordPress allows deleting user details upon request via Tools > Erase Personal Data. This removal can now also be associated with the orders of this user.

• Go to: WooCommerce > Settings > Accounts & Privacy.
• Under Account erasure requests:
  • Enable Remove personal data from orders on request, if you also want to remove order data when this is done
  • Enable Remove access to downloads on request, if the customer should no longer access the download links once their personal details have been removed.

Personal data retention can also be automated.

• Go to: WooCommerce > Settings > Accounts & Privacy
• Under Personal data retention, set thresholds for inactive accounts and for orders with different statuses.
• Save changes.

If enabled, this cleanup will run via a daily cron job. Inactive accounts are tracked using metadata, and only subscribers/customer accounts are removed.

Multi-Site Orders

Starting with WooCommerce 3.4+ there is now a widget that appears under Dashboard that shows order information from across all sites. You can click on an order to be taken to the details of the order on that site.

Troubleshooting

Understanding Order Statuses in Relation to Payment Gateways

The post Managing Orders first appeared on CODIBU.

In most cases, if email is not being sent/received, then the issue is not with WooCommerce itself, but with the core email function on your web host. Read on for solutions to common issues.

I am getting orders, but no emails are sending!

There are multiple factors that can be the cause. Before explaining the actual mail side of the issue, please ensure that it’s not one described below.

Check if orders are pending

If your new orders have the status Pending, no email would have been sent yet. Pending orders are orders where the customer selected Place Order but abandoned the payment page (depending on the payment gateway, i.e., PayPal) or had their credit card transaction declined.

If you have pending orders but receive payment for them via a payment gateway such as PayPal, the orders are not being updated, and this could indicate a problem with the payment gateway. In this case, you are not looking at a email issue; you are looking at an issue with your payment gateway and may need to submit a support ticket.

For PayPal Standard, we have this troubleshooting page.

Plugins can also return errors before status changes occur. To find out what may be causing this, you can either rule out conflicts by disabling plugins/themes other than WooCommerce itself, or you can use the WP debug log to view errors. If there are ‘fatal errors,’ this may be the problem.

Check your Email Settings

Orders that are properly updating to Processing should generate an email.

Another possible issue is mistakenly disabling emails from sending. Double-check that “Enable this email notification” is ticked for order notifications at WooCommerce > Settings > Emails and select the Processing Order email template. An additional test should be setting the Email Type to plain text.

Check if emails are sent, but not received

If emails are enabled and orders are updating to Processing, there could be an issue in the email delivery to a recipient. This could be a spam blocker that classified your emails are spam and stopped them. Installing a mail logging plugin can help.

Install WP Mail Logging plugin. This will log all outgoing mails so you can see what is being sent. Once installed:

• Generate a test order
• Go to your admin dashboard > WP Mail Log
• Check that your test order generated an email, and if there are any sending errors reported

After a successful send, the screen should look something like this:

If the email was sent, but not received, there are a few steps that can be taken:

• Make sure you’re using an email address attached to your own domain in the “From” Address field in WooCommerce > Settings >Emails. Using your @gmail.com, @yahoo.com or similar public domain email address will likely cause emails to land in spam folders due to mismatch between the declared sender (servers of Gmail or Yahoo) and the actual sender (your server).
• Sign up for an account with a dedicated SMTP provider (an average site can usually stay within free usage) that will send the email for you. This should be more reliable than your own server’s mail-sending function.

If the email was not sent, this could indicate a plugin conflict blocking the send by, for example, erring before they are generated. To find out what is causing this, you can either rule out conflicts by disabling plugins/themes other than WooCommerce itself, or you can use the WP debug log to view errors. If there are ‘fatal errors,’ this may be the problem.

What is a dedicated SMTP provider? Is that like my Gmail account?

A dedicated SMTP provider is similar to a web host in that you have an account and use their servers. The difference is instead of hosting websites, you use their servers to send emails. Gmail is an email provider where you send and receive emails; a dedicated SMTP provider is similar to having half of Gmail, where you only send emails and not receive them.

Can I use Gmail as my SMTP provider?

Yes, but it is not ideal. Gmail will disable your account if you send emails to more than 500 unique recipients in an 24-hour period. This includes emails you send yourself and all emails your website is sending. More at: Google Support: Gmail Answers.

Suggested Dedicated SMTP Providers

There are dedicated SMTP providers that work for most websites. All have their own plugin on WordPress.org, can be installed from your WordPress dashboard, and have support available to help you get started.

• Mailjet (Plugin) – Send 6,000 emails free per month.
• Sendinblue (Plugin) – Send 300 emails free per day.
• SendWP (Plugin) – it costs $9/ month for an account.
• Amazon SES (Plugin) – Send 62,000 emails free per month if your website is hosted on AWS or pricing starts at $0.10 for every 1,000 emails.

How does email work?

Comparing a path an email takes to reach its destination vs. driving a car on a road trip, emails do not travel directly from point A to point B. The final destination is more like point W, and the email is bouncing from one server to another at the speed of light while being filtered at each step.

Google has compiled this representation of the path an email follows. This story is specific to Gmail and delivering to a mobile device but helps explain how email works. More at: Story of Send.

How does email work with WordPress?

WooCommerce, and most plugins sending email, send mail by using the wp_mail() function that is a core function of WordPress.

Does that mean WordPress sends my email? Is WooCommerce sending the email?

Neither are sending the email. What happens is WooCommerce calls the wp_mail() function, which then requests WordPress to send the email. Because WordPress is not an email server, it typically asks PHP to send the email for it. PHP then checks for a local email server within the web server and tells that email server to send the email. Your email takes three steps before reaching your web server.

If email is passed to my web server to be sent, how does a dedicated SMTP provider fit in?

By using a plugin the SMTP provider has available or the Post SMTP plugin, the wp_mail() function reroutes the email from PHP to your SMTP provider. From there, the SMTP provider receives the request and adds your email to a queue to be sent.

If emails are being blocked by spam filters, why is it not in my spam folder?

The spam filter is the last and final spam filter your email is filtered through, at which point it is going to spam based on your email client settings or how you mark other emails as spam. If your emails are denied by another spam filter before that, it simply is not delivered.

My contact form emails work, so why do WooCommerce emails get blocked?

Without deep investigation into server logs and tracking exact email paths, this is not a simple question to answer.

• The short version is there is a lot more to spam filters than scanning for typical spam. Spam filters check the IP address of origin, the sending user and domain, the amount of email that IP/sender has sent, how many times emails from that sender have been marked as spam, and the wording of emails.
• The most common factor is where the email originates, which brings your overall score with spam filters down low enough that even minor differences in wording and formatting of WooCommerce emails may be flagged as spam and not sent.

Can I send purchased downloadable files as attachments in the Order Completed and Invoice emails?

Yes! Add this snippet to the end of your theme’s functions.php file:

Resources

SenderScore by ReturnPath

Check and monitor the reputation of your websites IP address for sending emails, if you have your own dedicated server for sending emails. You can also use this for shared and virtual hosting environments, but it is better to get a dedicated SMTP provider instead because those environments are not recommended for sending emails. Visit Senderscore.org to learn more.

The post Email FAQ first appeared on CODIBU.

In WooCommerce itself you can process refunds in two ways:

• Automatic: Refunds change the WooCommerce order status and also reverse the charge so your customer gets their money (jump to section).
• Manual: Refunds change the WooCommerce order status, but you need to return the money manually to your customer (jump to section).

Automatic Refunds

These are called Automatic refunds as when you process refunds that are connected to your payment gateway. Once you’ve processed this type of refund in your WooCommerce Admin, no further actions are necessary.

1. Check: Review the documentation or support of your payment gateway on whether automatic refunds are available. Most automatic payments fully support this.
2. Scope: Refunds normally extend to products, taxes, and shipping fees. However, transaction fees charged by the payment gateway will likely be lost and not refunded.
3. Setup: Make sure that your API settings are set and test your payment gateway and refunds while in sandbox or test mode:
   
4. WooCommerce: Refunds can be processed through the Orders:
   1. Go to: WooCommerce > Orders.
   2. Select the order to refund.
   3. Go to the order summary, and select “Refund” to start.
   4. Specify the quantity of the product(s) to be refunded in the text box(es) that appear for each line item. The refund amount will automatically adjust based on the products refunded. If inventory levels are not managed, you can also enter the Refund amount, without adjusting the product quantity.
   5. If the quantities of items are not set when issuing a refund then the order is not marked as refunded and the email that is sent will say “partial refund.”
   6. Add refund notes, if desired.
   7. Select “Refund $XX.XX via [your gateway]”.
      

How Do I Know It Worked?

Order Notes in the right sidebar will log refunds. Keep an eye on the order notes to learn if it’s been logged or if there’s an error message. A successful “Refunded” message in order notes concludes the refund.

Manual Refunds

1. Check: Consult the documentation or support of your payment gateway on whether manual refunds are available. You will either need to:
   • Log in to your payment method account and process the refund there.
   • Transfer the money from your bank account manually.
2. Scope: Refunds normally extend to products, taxes, and shipping fees. However, transaction fees charged by the payment gateway will likely be lost and not refunded.
3. WooCommerce: Refunds can be processed through your Orders page. To manually refund an order:
   1. Go to: WooCommerce > Orders.
   2. Select the order to refund.
   3. Go to the order summary, and select “Refund” to start.
   4. Specify the quantity of the product(s) to be refunded in the text box(es) that appear for each line item. The refund amount will automatically adjust based on the products refunded. If inventory levels are not managed, you can also enter the Refund amount, without adjusting the product quantity.
   5. If the quantities of items are not set when issuing a refund then the order is not marked as refunded and the email that is sent will say “partial refund.”
   6. Add refund notes, if desired.
   7. Select “Refund $XX.XX manually”.
      

Items selected for a refund will be noted as refunded. Once the refund has been applied to the order, it will look like this:

Restocking Products Based on Refunds

When processing a refund, you have the option to restock products by ticking the “Restock refunded items” box:

FAQs

How do I find out if my payment gateway is refund-compatible?

• Check the documentation of the payment gateway.
• Buy the plugin and give it a try. We have a 30-day Money Back Guarantee and can refund you with no hassle.
• Check with the payment gateway provider.
• Ask us.

How do I inform my customers about the refund policy?

The best starting point is to create a page describing your policy and how a customer can request a refund (you can use our policy for inspiration).

The next step is to share it with customers. There are different options you might want to consider:

• Option 1: adding the policy link into a menu in your store
• Option 2: adding the policy link into orders confirmation emails (the emails can be customized)

I am a developer. How do I find out if my payment gateway is refund-compatible?

Go to How to check if your payment gateway supports refunds and look up class constructor class properties.

The post WooCommerce Refunds first appeared on CODIBU.