The Orders List & Order Lifecycle
Search, filter, and export your orders, and understand the numbered journey every order follows from placement to delivery.
Go to Orders in the left navigation. This is your daily command centre for everything that has been bought on your store.
The Orders list
At the top of the screen you get headline numbers:
- Today's Orders — how many new purchases arrived since midnight.
- Pending Delivery — orders still in transit or awaiting dispatch.
- Revenue This Week — total confirmed sales for the rolling seven-day window, in your store's currency.
Below the headline numbers sits the full order table.
What you can do on the list
- Search by order number or customer name, in real time.
- Filter by status — Pending, Processing, Shipped, Delivered, or Cancelled.
- Export the visible list to CSV.
- Select rows and act in bulk — see below.
Marketplace stores get a vendor filter
If your store runs as a marketplace with multiple vendors, a vendor filter and column let you view only the orders belonging to one seller, and column headers let you sort the table by date or value. This keeps marketplace admins from working through a single undivided list.
Newer dashboard skin
If your dashboard is on the newer visual skin, the vendor filter/column and column sorting described above are not present on the Orders list yet — those controls are being reintroduced. Everything else on this page applies to both skins.
Bulk actions
Tick the checkboxes on multiple rows to reveal a bulk action bar. From there you can:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Update status | Move every selected order to a new status in one step |
| Export | Download the selected orders |
| Message customers | Opens a composer to write a message addressed to the customers on the selected orders |
Message customers doesn't send yet, on the newer dashboard skin
On the newer dashboard skin, Message customers opens a working-looking composer — you can type a message and press Send, and you'll see a "Message sent" confirmation. Nothing is actually delivered to the customer yet; the send action isn't wired to email, SMS, or WhatsApp. Use the automatic status-change notifications (see below) or contact the customer directly using the details on their order for now.
Filtering the list on the newer dashboard skin (v2)
The status dropdown described above is a classic-screen control. On the newer dashboard skin the Orders list is filtered with a row of tabs instead, and each tab replaces a chunk of what the dropdown did:
| Tab | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Priority queue | Pending orders that need your attention first |
| Today | Orders placed today |
| Awaiting payment | Orders still pending payment confirmation |
| Ready to ship | Orders confirmed and ready for fulfilment |
| Earlier | Orders older than today |
| All | Every order, unfiltered |
A search box sits to the right of the tabs — it searches by order ID or customer name, the same as the classic screen's search. There is no separate status dropdown on this skin: switching tabs is how you filter.
The KPI strip
Above the tabs, four figures summarise the list at a glance:
- Today — today's order count, shown with a small trend sparkline.
- Collected — this week's revenue total.
- Awaiting you — how many orders are waiting on a decision from you (the same count as Pending Delivery above).
- Fulfilled — reserved for a fulfilled-orders count; it currently always shows a dash (–) because the backend doesn't yet report this figure.
Pagination
The order table paginates rather than showing everything at once. At the bottom of the list you can:
- Change how many rows show per page — 5, 10, 25, or 50.
- Step through pages with Previous and Next buttons.
- Read the current range (for example, "42 total · 1–10") next to the controls.
Empty states
- No orders at all — if your store has no orders yet, the list shows a "no orders yet" message with a Create first order button. That button currently shows the same "coming soon" message as the + New order button above — see the note on manual order creation further down this page.
- No results for the current filter — if orders exist but the active tab/search combination matches none of them, the list shows a "no matches" message with a Clear filters button that resets the tab to All, clears your search, and resets any vendor/date filters in one click.
The order lifecycle — a numbered journey
Every order follows a clear, colour-coded path. A progress indicator on the order detail screen shows exactly where that order sits right now.
Pending
The customer has placed the order. Payment may still be processing. No action needed yet — the system is confirming the transaction.
Processing
Payment is confirmed. The order is in your hands: pick, pack, and prepare it for dispatch. This is your working state.
Shipped
You have handed the parcel to a carrier and booked a shipment. A tracking number is attached. The customer receives an automatic notification.
Delivered
The carrier has confirmed delivery. The order is complete.
Newer dashboard skin shows a 5-stage timeline
The order detail screen on the newer dashboard skin displays this same journey as a 5-stage timeline with a timestamp against each stage: Placed, Paid, Fulfilled, Shipped, Delivered. Placed and Paid together correspond to the classic screen's Pending → Processing step (an order becomes Paid once payment is confirmed); Fulfilled marks the order as ready to ship, ahead of the Shipped stage. The underlying statuses are the same — this skin just shows the payment/fulfilment split as its own stages instead of folding them into "Processing."
Two alternate paths exist outside the main flow:
- Cancelled — the order was stopped before fulfilment. The cancellation reason is recorded and displayed on the order. The customer is notified automatically. If payment was already collected, a refund can be started from the same screen.
- Returned — the customer sent the item back. The return state sits alongside the refund workflow — see Refunds.
Tip
Every status change (order placed, shipped, cancelled, refund processed) triggers an automatic message to the customer by email, SMS, and WhatsApp using the contact details they gave at checkout. You do not need to send these yourself.
Quick reference — order statuses
| Status | What it means | Who can see it |
|---|---|---|
| Pending | Order placed; payment being confirmed | Merchant & customer |
| Processing | Payment confirmed; being picked & packed | Merchant & customer |
| Shipped | Handed to carrier; tracking number active | Merchant & customer |
| Delivered | Carrier confirmed delivery | Merchant & customer |
| Cancelled | Order stopped; reason recorded | Merchant & customer |
| Returned | Item sent back by customer | Merchant (refund handled separately) |
Tracking numbers and invoices from the list
You don't have to open every order to move it forward:
- Tracking-number entry happens from the order detail screen once a shipment is booked — see Order Detail: Status, Cancellation & Fulfilment Handoff.
- Invoice generation — open any order and use the invoice preview to get a fully formatted PDF: your store's branding, the customer's billing address, a line-item table, tax breakdown, and totals.
- CSV/PDF export — export the whole visible list, or generate a PDF invoice for a single order.
No manual order creation today
The Orders screen shows a "+ New order" button, but it is not yet a working feature — there is no way to create an order manually from the admin panel. Orders are created only when a customer completes checkout on your storefront. Clicking the button shows an informational message rather than opening an order form.
Next steps
- Order Detail: Status, Cancellation & Fulfilment Handoff — everything you can do once you open a single order.
- Refunds — the full refund approval workflow.