Understanding your orders' statuses is important because they affect which orders are pulled onto reports and how orders are sent to fulfillment. When troubleshooting unexpected reporting totals or missing order information, checking order statuses is a great place to start.
What order statuses mean
In process: Your eCommerce or POS platform has accepted payment, and an order has been created. This status is not seen often, because it's an intermediate step: this status means the order has been created through your eCommerce platform but is not yet in ShipCompliant.
Payment accepted: Your order has been created through your eCommerce or POS platform and added to ShipCompliant.
Through your eCommerce platform, you can often customize the status orders will have when they are pulled into ShipCompliant. Setting orders to pull into ShipCompliant with a status of Payment accepted can be helpful, especially if you have an integration with a fulfillment partner and would like more manual control over which orders ship and when. Setting orders to pull in with a status of Sent to fulfillment can speed up the fulfillment process.
Sent to fulfillment: Your order is ready to be shipped and its information can be seen by your fulfillment house, if applicable. Changing the order status to Sent to fulfillment is an important step in the fulfillment process. (Read more here.) You must change orders to this status in order to make your order information visible to fulfillment, especially when using auto-fulfillment.
Shipped: Your order has been shipped by your fulfillment house or in-house fulfillment process. Orders with this status typically have a tracking number. Orders with a Shipped status can now appear on reporting.
Delivered: Your order has made it to the customer. The life cycle of the order is now complete.
Orders with a voided status
Orders that have been voided are hidden by default, so viewing them requires a special filter.
- In ShipCompliant, go to Orders and click Adv. Search.
- Click Show to see additional filters.
- Select the box next to Show all voided versions.
When you void an order, it will be removed from anything it might be shown on, like a report. Voided versions of an order show all previous order-related data, documenting how an order has changed. Essentially, they work as a change log for your order data.
Looking at previous versions of your order with a voided status can be helpful if you want to make sure your order has changed, or look into an issue with a particular order.
Voiding an order removes it from state reporting, so voiding an order can remove it from filings if you need to do so (if you've granted a refund, for example). Once you void the order, your reports will change accordingly.
You may see the orange View changes button appear next to your report. Remember to generate a new version of your report before filing to ensure you include the latest order information.
Best practices for voiding orders
If your eCommerce integration automatically updates ShipCompliant as part of the refund process, your orders will update automatically and you won't need to make any changes.
If you don't have an integration or you need to manually mark an order as refunded or void an order, search for your order in ShipCompliant and follow this process.
- In ShipCompliant, go to Orders and click Adv. Search.
- Search for the order you need to refund or void.
- Click More next to the order you want to refund, then click Edit.
- In the Edit popup, scroll down to the History section. Click Shipping Status and select Voided.
- Click Save.
Common order status troubleshooting questions
My order is not showing up on state reporting.
The ship date on your order is used for excise tax and shipper reports, whereas payment date is used for sales tax reports. First, check your order status and relevant dates to verify that they match the dates the report is pulling.
In your Report Settings, the default is to include orders with a status of Sent to Fulfillment on reports that are based on ship date. You can decide whether to keep this status on; if it's off, it could affect what orders are being included on your reports.
My order has been completed but has not been sent to fulfillment.
Go to Orders - Adv. Search, and filter by order status. You can manually change order status from here, if necessary. The combined options (All unshipped, In process and payment accepted) can be helpful here if you're checking on multiple orders.
You can also search by invoice number in the keyword field. This can help you find a specific orders' status, and check its tracking number if it has already shipped.