Let’s admit it. WooCommerce order management is no cakewalk.
If not streamlined, it can get out of control. Leaving your business in chaos.
So how to stay in control of your WooCommerce store while dealing with orders? How to make order management simple and stress-free?
Read below to find out. You’ll be amazed and will ask yourself…why didn’t I land here earlier!
How to manage orders using default or core WooCommerce?
WooCommerce order management involves managing everything related to the order lifecycle – creation, payment, tracking, returns, etc.
Now, WooCommerce is a powerful tool and gives good details related to your orders. You’ll find it under WooCommerce > Orders under your WordPress Admin panel.
We’ll first see about handling existing orders.
Orders summary
This is the WooCommerce orders page where some relevant information of your orders are displayed – purchaser, order status, billing address, etc.
You can also click on the Screen Options at the top right corner of the screen to view other information about your orders. (see below image)
Bulk action and Filters
This is to change order statuses after the order is placed. Select some orders to perform a bulk action like:
- Move to Trash
- Change status to processing
- Change status to on-hold
- Change status to completed
If you need to search for an order or filter orders by month, customer name or email, and the order type (original or renewal), you can do that.
Accessing and editing products order
Besides the order number, you’ll see an Eye icon. Click on it and you’ll see the order summary.
Simply click on the order number and you will see detailed information about the order.
1. Editing order status
On the Order details page, you can see the general details of the order. Customer name, payment method, order date. etc.
You can change the order status here from the drop-down.
For some of the payment options like Direct Bank Transfer, Cheque Payments and Cash On Delivery, you have to manually change the order status to process the order further.
The different options for order status are as follows:
- Pending payment – Order received but payment is pending
- Processing – Payment is done but the order is in process. Here, the order status will be ‘Processing’ till the shipment reaches the customer. Downloadable products won’t have this status.
- Completed – Payment is received and order is completed
- On-Hold – Payment is yet to be confirmed, but the stock is reduced
- Cancelled – Customer cancels the order
- Refunded – Order is refunded
- Failed – Payment is declined or failed. Until verified, this might still show status as Pending.
2. Billing and shipping details
Next are the billing and shipping addresses. You can edit these details if required.
3. Item details
View the product details – name, SKU, price, quantity, discount applied, payment gateway fees. Click on the Refund button to issue a refund.
4. Custom Fields
Also, you can add custom metadata fields in the Custom Fields section. Use the Add Custom Field button to create a new custom field.
5. Downloadable product permissions
If you want to give access of any other downloadable product to a customer, you can enter the product name here and click on the 'Grant access button.
6. Order notes / Purchase notes & Order actions
This section is on the right. It has internal notes regarding the change of order status and any other details. You can either add a private note for your reference or send a note to the customer using the Add note section.
Order actions provide you a drop down for other order actions like send order email, print order invoice, etc.
Creating a new order manually
You can also create a new order for the products.
- Under
WooCommerce > Orders, click theAdd Orderbutton to manually create an order. Add the relevant information of the order, along with the order status. - The next section is Order items. Add the products using the
Add item(s)button which will be ordered. - Further is the
Custom Fieldssection. You can put additional details in the Custom Fields. - The last section is called
Downloadable product permissions. In this section, you can add some downloadable products to the order. Once the order is confirmed, the customer can download the uploaded products.
Phew…that’s quite a lot difficult managing a single order.
As you can imagine, as the business grows, the number of orders is going to shoot up. And so are your challenges. But don’t worry, the world always find solutions to deal with those challenges. And order management too has found one.
Why use plugin for WooCommerce order management?
WooCommerce order management is not very complicated using default WooCommerce. But difficult and time-consuming surely.
You need to enter inside each order to make a change every now and then for all the fields. Even if you need to edit a single field of each order or create a new order, you have to repeat the tedious procedure.
Worse, if you want to look up specific orders and make an edit amongst thousands of orders, or perform a bulk operation to other order fields, it’s a pain.
So tell me, are you willing to spend your productive time doing order management like this?
OR lookout for something that speeds up this entire process and gives you massive time savings!
If you agree with the latter, Smart Manager is a breakthrough WooCommerce order management plugin you’ll ever come across.
How Smart Manager makes WooCommerce order management friction-free?
Smart Manager lets you manage all your orders from one place using an Excel-like spreadsheet. Quick and easy. People also call it smart WooCommerce order status manager.
It’s your smart store manager that gives you massive time-savings and boosts your productivity 10x. You don’t need to dig through each order to make an edit for any field.
Not just orders, Smart Manager lets you manage WooCommerce products (any type), coupons, posts, any WordPress post types, any order custom fields added by any custom plugins.
Here’s how to better manage orders with Smart Manager:
View all orders at one place
You can easily view all your orders at one place with all the details, without moving away. Address, purchaser, coupons used, payment method, order total, billing and shipping details, etc. all in front of your eyes. Clean and crisp.
Inline edit orders
Directly make an edit to the required order field using the grid. Be it changing order status, adding new order or deleting orders, you can do that.
For example, you received payment for orders via cheque payments and Direct Bank Transfer. Directly mark these orders as Complete using the grid.
Add new orders
Smart Manager gives you full flexibility to add any number of new orders directly. Big time-savings. Once your orders are created, you can use the batch update or bulk edit feature to fill order details. Extra time savings!
Bulk edit orders (Our top USP)
Be it changing order statuses, shipping entries, payment method, order total, you can update them within seconds. 100 or 1000 orders, our bulk edit technology takes care of everything.
You can also print order invoices in bulk.
As said earlier, Smart Manager also helps in managing inventory or stock levels. You can track your products whether they are in stock or approaching the zero mark. This helps you re-order new products and maintain stock levels to avoid stock out.
Instant order search and edit using filters
Smart Manager’s another USP – Advanced Search.
It pulls exact results amongst thousands of orders based on conditions. You can use operators, keywords to search for orders you want and not let random orders pop up.
Apply filters, edit order fields and Save. Super-fast!
Go to Smart Manager dashboard, click on the Advanced Search toggle. It will open up a side over panel. Now enter your search conditions. We entered the date, order status and order total conditions to perform the export.
You can even bulk edit orders based on search conditions.
For example, you may have test orders and you want to delete them. So simply search these orders based on keywords, select them and delete them in bulk.
Export Orders
Another advantage of using Smart Manager is export CSV. You can export all orders or export only those orders you require. This means you can export records based on date, search and column filters.
You won’t believe me, but exported orders is a goldmine of insights.
Top eleven insights from your export orders CSV.
Columns and sorting
Smart Manager also lets you show or hide admin columns for orders fields as you wish. Simply enable/disable columns and you are done. As shown in the above image, we have enabled only limited columns for export. You can also sort a particular column.
Access privileges
Now sometimes you don’t want shop managers to view all your other store data except orders. So using Smart Manager plugin, you can give access to only specific dashboards to specific users. For example – shop managers can also access the Orders dashboard.
So, it looks like you are now well versed with Smart Manager and the benefits you get while managing orders management.
Strategies to get sales from placed orders
Don’t restrict yourself by just managing orders. Leverage orders placed on your WooCommerce store to grow sales and retain customers. Here’s how:
Send customized emails
Do not send your customers the plain default WooCommerce emails. But send them customized emails to establish your brand identity.
And Email Customizer For WooCommerce plugin does this job pretty well.
Have a look at some readymade email templates. You can customize all WooCommerce order emails using this plugin.
With Email Customizer Pro for WooCommerce plugin, you can also upsell cross-sell products from within the order email. Since customers have already made a purchase from you, they are more prone to make a purchase again.
Get Email Customizer Pro plugin
Customize order received page
Not just your email, but the default WooCommerce order received page is also boring. It’s a dead end. You can easily customize WooCommerce thank you page using our Custom Thank You Page for WooCommerce plugin and unearth a plethora of benefits.
You can offer a coupon, show offers, recommended products, share valuable resources, collect feedback and a lot more. All possible using the Custom Thank You Page for WooCommerce plugin.
Get Custom Thank You Page plugin
Handle refunds
Through seamless integration with different payment gateways, WooCommerce allows hassle-free refunds.
And if you are looking for some quick and easy plugin to manage refunds, WooCommerce Smart Refunder should be your preferred choice.
Using WooCommerce Smart Refunder:
- Customers can request a refund from My Account – easy, quick and complete
- Customer get instant refunds if store owners opt in and the payment gateway supports it
- Store owners can issue cash refunds or store credits
This won’t get you sales for now, but you will be able to keep the customer happy. A happy customer is always a future sales prospect.
Get WooCommerce Smart Refunder plugin
Target customers based on in-depth order reports
How many orders are acquired per day on average? Did this month’s orders surpass orders compared to the previous month? How frequently do you receive orders? Which customers place orders frequently?
Get answers to your most desired questions related to your orders at one place. Accurate and in real-time using Putler.
Simply connect your WooCommerce stores to Putler and you’ll be taken into a world of awesome analytics and insights. If you want to grow your business, you need Putler.
Ready for a friction-free WooCommerce order management?
Look, you are here to grow your business and not waste time in order management using traditional WooCommerce. As your business grows, orders are going to increase and so your challenges.
Be smart and use Smart Manager plugin. It will help you kick off those challenges and have an efficient order management.
It’s a promise, you won’t regret.