Order statuses
Each Ecwid order has a payment order state and a fulfillment order state.
Payment statuses
| Queued |
The "Queued" state indicates that the order was placed successfully, but you haven't received any funds yet. All the orders places by offline payment methods (such as Phone ordering, Wire Transfer, etc) get this status by default. |
| Accepted |
The "Accepted" state indicates that you have fully charged the customer for an order. All the successful orders placed using payment gateways (e.g. Authorize.Net, PayPal, Google Checkout, etc) get this status by default.
|
Chargeable
|
The "Chargeable" state indicates that you can charge the customer for the order (this status may become obsolete in the next Ecwid versions)
|
Declined
|
The "Declined" state indicates that gateway's effort to authorize or charge the customer's credit card has failed.
|
Cancelled
|
The "Cancelled" state indicates that the merchant has canceled the order. |
Fulfillment statuses
| New |
It is the default fulfillment state for all the new orders.
|
| Processing |
This state indicates that you are in the process of filling the customer's order. |
| Shipped |
It indicated that you have already shipped the order. |
| Delivered |
Indicates that the order has been delivered.
|
Will not deliver
|
The "Will not deliver" fulfillment state indicates that you will not ship the items to the customer. |
Unfinished sales
The 'Unfinished Sales' page in Ecwid control panel lists all the ordering attempts when the customer did not complete the payment for an order, including the cases like:
- returning from checkout steps back to the shop to add or review their cart,
- customer has changed his/her mind on the whole idea of buying something.
Each line in the unfinished sales table contains short description of an order (date, total cost, payment method, cart contents), a customer email (so you can contact customer to find out why s/he hasn't finished the order) and the 'Place this order' button. When you click that button, the selected order is placed in the regular orders list, it is marked with a 'Queued' status and the order notifications is sent to a customer (like for the new orders). But, of course, Ecwid doesn't automatically charge a customer credit card in such a case, i.e. you will need to charge a customer manually. It is also important that an unfinished order does not lock the items bought - the stock quantities are only decreased as soon as a complete order gets a 'Queued' or 'Accepted' status.
The unfinished sales listing is only available with the Silver plan.
FAQ
I've already have some orders, where is my money?
Ecwid itself does not collect or store any money for sales made to your customers. It just helps you sell your products and charge your customers, all sales are going directly to your payment gateway's account. So you will need to contact your payment gateway(for example PayPal) to have your money transferred to your bank, if it is not set up to do so automatically.
If you haven't set up any payment gateway yet, please select one from this list and then follow the instructions.
Please note, that if an order was placed using a so called "offline" payment method (for example "Phone ordering" or "Pay by check", such methods have the "Offline" type in the control panel), then Ecwid just creates a new order in the database and stores customer`s data. No actual charges are made, so you need to contact your customer to get your money.
How can I change my Order ID's?
By default, order id's are the numbers starting from 1, which are incremented for each order. Ecwid paid users have the ability to change what their Order IDs look like for their customers and increase them if necessary. So if you don’t want to start with order #1 and want to appear as a mature online store for your customers, you can increase it to #1000 in a few clicks.
The Order ID can be changed on the "System Settings → General → Cart" page, (the "Order Settings" section).
Also you can add a prefix or suffix to your IDs, so they can look like “MY-STORE-1000-2011″. Where “MY-STORE” and “2011″ are prefixes/suffixes set up in your Ecwid backend. For example, this feature is helpful if you have numerous Ecwid stores and want to differentiate your orders.
So basically your Order ID has the following format: PREFIX-NUMBER-SUFFIX
where, PREFIX and SUFFIX are static parts and can be empty. NUMBER always remains and is increased incrementally with each order automatically.
Why order ids are not consecutive? Some order ids are missed
You may notice the missing order ids on the Sales page. E.g. you have order #10, the next order has the #14 ID and there are no #11, #12, #13 orders.
Such missing order IDs appear when your customer starts to checkout and doesn't finish the transaction. For example if you use PayPal Standard payment gateway and customer is redirected to PayPal, but doesn't pay, Ecwid will create a hidden "incomplete" order which isn't shown in the 'Orders' table. Such orders are listed under the 'Unfinished sales' tab (this option is available for Silver users only). So just ignore these missing IDs, it isn't an issue.
How to assign a tracking number to an order?
In order to assign a tracking number to an order, perform these steps:
1. Log in to your Ecwid control panel and open the Sales tab.
2. Click the "Ship >>" button near the necessary order.
3. Enter the necessary tracking number and save the changes. A customer will get a notification with this number.
If you want, you can modify or translate the text of such notifications.
Can my customers get a tracking code by e-mail?
Yes, Ecwid sends the tracking code and URL in notifications to your customers.
If they don't get them, then first of all, please check if the "Order shipped" notifications are enabled. Then check the content of these notifications, they should have this code:
-- Order tracking --
START TRACKING_URL
You can track your order using the following URL: %trackingURL%
END TRACKING_URL
The order tracking number is %trackingNumber%
When you use user-defined shipping, Ecwid actually doesn't know what shipping carrier you use for it and doesn't include a tracking URL in emails. Only a tracking number is included. So, you will need to add such a URL to your notifications manually.
Replace the code above with this one:
-- Order tracking --
You can track your order using the following URL: http://wwwapps.ups.com/tracking/tracking.cgi
The order tracking number is %trackingNumber%
Feel free to replace the UPS tracking URL with any other one.
How can I generate sales reports based on my orders in Ecwid?
Ecwid doesn't have built-in tools to generate different sales reports yet. However, it is possible to do this:
- Export your orders to a CSV file. You can do it on the Sales page in your Ecwid Control Panel.
- Open the CSV file in Excel/OpenOffice/Google Docs.
- Build the necessary reports using them.
Can I import my orders into QuickBooks?
Yes, it is possible. You can export your orders to a CSV file and import it to Quickbooks then. Check this instruction on importing a CSV file to QuickBooks: support.quickbooks.intuit.com/support/Pages/KnowledgeBaseArticle/1005472
Can a customer return to the shop and re-initiate an unfinished order by himself?
In Ecwid, the contents of customer's cart are preserved for 30 days in their browser. The cart contents are only erased upon successful order placing. Moreover, the addresses put in the completed checkout steps are remembered. So the customer is able to re-initiate the checkout process for the same order again. If, however, your customer is not able to re-initiate an order the said way (for example, if their browser's data has been cleared somehow on their computer), you can find it in the Unfinished sales page of your Ecwid control panel and restore it.
How can I decrease the number of unfinished orders and enhance checkout conversion rate?
In order to increase the conversion rate in your store, please follow these general recommendations:
- Make sure all payment methods in your store are properly configured (you can find an exact instruction on configuration of each payment method available in Ecwid here).
- Ask your customers whether your payment methods are convenient for them. First of all, your customers should be available to use them (e.g. national payment gateways may be a trouble for international customers). Second, your customers may sometimes be confused as to how exactly to pay online. In order to make the checkout more useful and understandable, provide more payment methods in your store, name them accordingly (e.g. 'Credit card' is not the most appropriate name for PayPal - instead, 'PayPal or Credit cards' would be a bit better) and don't forget to accompany each of them with a good instruction.
- Having the generally appealing, well described and well illustrated products and overall confiding website also helps to lower the rate of unfinished sales, but this is the least important part, affecting the sales only after the aforementioned typical roadblocks in the checkout are removed in your store.
