What to do when you receive a purchase order in your e-Commerce?

You have created your website, given your special touch, added your products, configured your shipping and payment methods, and have everything ready to give your customers the best attention and service.

Then comes the long-awaited moment when you receive your first purchase!

You have created your website, given your special touch, added your products, configured your shipping and payment methods, and have everything ready to give your customers the best attention and service.

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Then comes the long-awaited moment when you receive your first purchase!

What to do?

First, celebrate your success in making a sale; it is the moment that, after much work, you receive its fruits, and now it is time to process the order received.

Magento being an e-commerce platform, has already been predefined. The process must follow an order from received until it is delivered to the customer. Then we will see what to do when the customer makes an order until it reaches your hands and is given as completed the purchase process.

Let's see first the process that the customer follows to place an order:

1. Login to your eCommerce.
2. Search for a product.
3. Add it to your cart.
4. Proceed to checkout.
5. Enter your contact information.
6. Enter your shipping address.
7. Select one of the shipping methods previously configured.
8. Enter your payment information.
9. Place your order.

If this occurs, you will have created an order in Magento, and here the customer will receive an email with the information about his order. The person in charge of processing the orders will receive an email notification indicating the new order received.

Then, here is where the work starts!

When you receive the order, you should go to the Sales > Orders module and locate it by the order number you received in the email. A good practice is to constantly check this list and take care of all the orders that are not pending.

Under a standard Magento configuration, the new order received can have one of the following statuses:

1. Pending
2. Processing
3. Payment Review.

When the order is received, it is necessary to move it through the statuses until; you can do this in the top panel in the actions buttons.

When the order is received, it is necessary to advance it in the statuses until we can do this in the upper panel in the actions buttons.

Pending Status - Pending

The initial status of the order, if it was well-received, in this status, will be all the new orders received and that have not been processed in any way, i.e., they have not stood invoiced (invoice) and have not been shipped (shipments).

Following the flow, it is now necessary to move the order to the Processing status (see below).

When to go to Processing status

It would be best to go to processing status when you have proof that you have enough inventory to supply the products purchased by the customer and the money is confirmed as received.

Change the order status to Processing status. It is necessary to create an Invoice by clicking on Invoice in the upper right panel.

A window will extend where you will see a summary of the order, and you will have to press the Submit Invoice button at the bottom of the page to complete the process.

When you do so, you will generate the invoice, and you will be able to view it from the order in the left panel under the Invoices section.

"This process is automatic when eCommerce is integrated with your bank and inventory system."

• When the order is invoiced, the customer is sent an electronic ticket containing the invoice for the order.

Orders automatically reach this status when there is prior verification that there is enough inventory to fill the order.

Other statuses an order may have:

Status Pending Review - Payment Review

This status referred to when making the order payment, but there was some problem while the transaction was being made and could not corroborate the payment of the order. Hence, it is necessary to make a manual intervention where the payment processor configured to verify the payment of the order is reviewed.

When this happens:

• The customer closes the payment window while it is still processing.
• The customer loses internet connection.
• An unexpected error interrupts the process.

• If the payment registers in your processor, you must make the approval of the payment, passing the order to a Processing status. This status is when the billing of your order ends.
• If you do not find any record of the payment, you should proceed to cancel the order since you did not make the payments.

In the case of canceling the order, it is an excellent practice to contact your customer to indicate that the payment was not received and the order will not be processed. Invite him to make a new purchase showing the necessary recommendations so that his order will be well processed this time.

If an order has already made an invoice, processed, and is ready to be shipped, it should move to the following status, Shipping.

Shipping Process

Following our actual process, when an order is invoiced, the order must be ready to be shipped, packed, and prepared for delivery.

Clicking on Ship will open a page where the shipment process will occur.

Here you can add the waybill number if our supplier provides us with a tracking number.

Clicking on Submit Shipment will complete the order and end the order process by marking the order as completed.

When this process is materialized, the order is marked as completed, and the corresponding inventory discounts will happen, simulating the exit of the products from your inventory.

And now with the order with status Completed.

You have finished processing the received order!

For the moment, this is the final of the actions to be performed in the order; always remember the following:

• Constantly review the orders that come into your site and bring them to Completed status.
• When an order is received with Payment Review status, check your processor to verify payment.
• Failure to complete orders will cause your physical and web inventory to get out of sync, causing errors in purchases.

Blog of interest: Differences between Magento B2B and Magento B2C

If you have any questions about how to fulfill an order you received or want to make any modifications to this process to suit your business's current needs, do not hesitate to contact us.