Keeping track of every step of an order cycle is important for you as a merchant. You need to be able to get information about the current status of an order at any time.
By using the order timeline you can optimize your order management. It also enables you to inform your customers about their orders if required. So, you can compare the order timeline to an order history you can always check back on. That's why every order comes with an order timeline.
Here's how to find it:
- In the sidebar of your cockpit, select Orders.
- Select the order you'd like to take a look at.
- Navigate to the card Timeline.
The timeline of an order is unique. Depending on the actions you've taken, every other order in your cockpit might have another timeline. Our example displays a timeline for an order that has been paid and shipped without any further issues:
Each entry of this timeline is displayed with the date and the time the entry was added. In our example, all entries have been made on 2019/12/19.
The entries are added chronologically and are displayed in an ascending order:
- The first entry of the timeline always states the day and time the order was placed. Additionally, it includes your legal documents generated from your legal pages such as Right of withdrawal and Terms & conditions.
- Our example customer chose invoice as their payment method. That's why the payment is automatically marked as outstanding once the order was placed.
- You as the merchant can see that the customer chose invoice as their payment method. Thus, your next step should be to create an invoice. Once you did this, it will also be displayed in the timeline.
- After you created the invoice, you need to send it to your customer. This will also be displayed as a separate entry in the timeline.
Additionally, you can use the Resend invoice link of this entry as an option to resend the invoice at any time. - At some point in time, you will (ideally) receive the pending amount from your customer. If so, you can mark the order as paid. Optionally, you can add a comment in this step. In our example, this comment states "Received by bank transfer" in order to clearly document the payment flow.
- You received your money. Now, it's time to ship the items. Once you've prepared the items for shipment you can mark the order as ready to ship. Optionally, you can add a comment and a tracking link in this step. In our example, we didn't do so.
- The packing slip is automatically created once you mark an order as ready to ship or as shipped. You can find it in the timeline and print it whenever needed.
- Once you shipped the items, you can mark the order as shipped. Optionally, you can add a comment and a tracking link in this step. In our example, the comment states "Shipped by #12". This way you can use the comment as an identifier of the person who was responsible for shipping. In our case: Employee #12. Furthermore, the optional tracking link is linked in this entry.
This timeline is just an example with the most common entries. More or less entries might appear in your order timelines, depending on your workflows and the specific orders. But for sure, everything that is relevant for your order will be displayed in the respective order timeline.