[intro] When you have completed this Guide, you will know how to process any orders that come into your Obodo shop. [/intro]

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Where to find the Orders page

1. From the Dashboard, click the Orders tab:

2. This will take you to the Orders page, where you’ll be able to see all of the Orders that your Obodo shop has received so far:

3. Below the search bar at the top the page, you’ll notice tick boxes. These allow you to search for Orders that have a specific status assigned to them. You’ll also see the headers ‘Order No’, ‘Name’, ‘Order Total’ and Order Date’ - each of these are clickable which help you search through orders made on a specific date, or by a specific person, or with a specific value. There are lots of other ways to search through your orders too, and you’ll learn about these within this Guide.

Searching for Orders

4. You can use the search bar at the top of the Orders page to search for customers by using their first name, last name or email address, and then by clicking the green Go button:

The Anatomy of an Order

5. If you click an order, you will be able to see all of the details of that single order:

a) This shows how many Loyalty Points the customer earned for this order.

b) This is the order number.

c) The Order Type is what Payment Method the customer used to purchase their goods.

d) This is the date and time the Order was completed.

e) This field is populated because I have a custom field set up on the Order Summary page of the Checkout Flow. You can read about how to do this by clicking here.

f) This field is populated because I have a discount set up which the customer used when they placed their order. You can read more about setting up Discounts by clicking here.

g) If I need to manually edit the order to let the system know that the customer paid. I do that by clicking the Edit button and amending the ‘traffic light’ colour.

The Traffic Light system

6. You’ll notice every order has a traffic light on it, which is our ‘at a glance’ system to allow you to quickly ascertain the status of an order. You can see the traffic lights as you look at all of the orders on the Orders page:

7. On individual orders, the traffic lights are more obvious:

Essentially, the colour of the traffic light changes when the status of an order changes. 

8. At the end of the Checkout Process, the customer is directed to the website of the Payment Gateway, where the secure payment process takes place. When that is complete, the customer is then redirected back to the Order Complete page of your Obodo shop and it’s that action - completing the transaction and being redirected to that page - which gives an order a green traffic light.

9. You can manually give orders the status of ‘red traffic light’ by clicking the Edit button to the right of the traffic light on the order and amending the drop-down menu:

You’ll need to do this in the case of orders where the customer did not pay, or in the case of external Payment Methods, where the customer did pay for their order, but they closed down their browser or went elsewhere before being redirected to the Order Complete page, which is the action that makes the traffic light green.

[remember] Check all orders with an amber traffic light if the customer paid using a Payment Gateway where they’re directed to another site, such as Stripe. In some cases, the customer will have paid for their order but closed their browser down before they are redirected to the Order Complete page. Ensure that you have actually received the money before processing the order any further. [/remember]

Order Notes & External Notes

10. The Order Notes and Internal Notes tabs can be edited on the Orders page, simply by clicking in the area and beginning to type. Clicking elsewhere on the page will save the text you’ve added:

11. Order Notes can be visible to this customer if you have opted for them to be visible on the Invoice. You can read more about this in this Guide. Internal Notes are only visible to you and your staff and can be used to record information specific to that order or communication between staff regarding the order.

Processing Orders

12. In the case of Stripe, the majority of the time orders paid for with this method will get a green traffic light when the customer has completed the transaction and been redirected to the Order Complete page of your Obodo shop.

On occasion, however, you will get the odd customer who closes their browser or navigates elsewhere before they are redirected to the Order Complete page of your Obodo shop. When this happens, you will have been paid, however, the traffic light on the Order will remain amber. Log into your account with Stripe and ensure that you have definitely received payment from the customer before you process their order any further.

Amending the Order Status

13. When you’re certain that you have received payment for the order, the next step is to amend the status. You can do this by clicking the Order Status drop-down in the top right-hand corner of the order, and amending it accordingly:

Each time you amend the status of an order, you can choose whether to email the customer to notify them of the fact in the window that opens up, which is useful for letting the customer know how their order is processing. You can read more about these emails and editing them to suit your brand in the Outgoing Emails Guide.

Troubleshooting

Why do my orders not have consecutive numbers?

When a customer adds a Product to the cart, this triggers the creation of an order number. If the customer then abandons the cart, the order number will have been created but the order will not be displayed on the Orders page. With all of this in mind, the systems does create consecutively, but if not enough information is added during the customer’s visit and the order is abandoned, the order will not be displayed on the Orders page as a matter of good housekeeping.

Why does the Product link in the order not work any more?

When an order is created, it takes a ‘snapshot’ of the Products at that point, so when you view the order, you can click the Product links to be taken to the appropriate Product Page. However, if you edit that Product after the order has taken place, the link on the order is removed, because that Product has been amended in some way and it is different to the way it was the moment the order was originally completed.

Why is the traffic light still orange even though they've paid?

To get a green traffic light on an order, the customer must have been redirected to the Order Complete page. However if the customer closed down their browser or navigated elsewhere, they will not have been redirected to the Order Complete page, which is why the order has an orange/amber light. Before you process the order, log into your Stripe account and ensure that payment was actually received. You will then be able to manually amend the status of the order and process it as normal.

I like to edit every order but this seems to cause issues - why?

If orders are uncompleted and then edited, this can potentially prevent the order working correctly. With that in mind, the only time you should need to edit an order should be if your customer contacts you to change their address after they’ve placed the order.

The customer has paid - but we can't see the order?

If the customer has paid for their order but it’s not visible on the Orders page, this is because it has been manually deleted. If you contact our Customer Support Team, they should be able to retrieve the order for you.

How do I reorder the orders? It's showing the oldest orders first!

You can do this by clicking the Order Date header towards the top right of the screen, below the search bar. This will reorder your orders for you.

I can't see my orders when I search?

You need to make sure you’ve ticked the boxes beneath the search bar. These are the filters for the orders, and ticking some or all of these means that when you search, you’ll see results.

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[contact]If you need our help with your Obodo shop, contact our Customer Support Team, who will be able to point you in the right direction. We're open from 8am-6pm weekdays and 9am-5.30pm on the weekends. If you have a non-account specific question ask the Obodo Team, join us in the Obodo Community on Facebook. [/contact]