X-Cart:Orders

Orders in X-Cart

In an X-Cart based store, customers purchase products by placing orders. An order is a collection of information about a purchase, which includes:

• information about product items being purchased (product titles, quantities, prices);
• information about the customer who is making the purchase (personal information, billing and shipping addresses, contact information);
• information about the method of delivery selected by the customer (name of method, shipping cost);
• information about the payment method selected by the customer (name of method, payment details);
• discounts, coupon codes or gift certificates applied;
• total amount.

Each order has its unique order id number and, at any moment in time, is characterized by a status. For information on the system of order statuses used in X-Cart, see the section #Order Statuses.

Roles in order management

If you are an X-Cart GOLD administrator/provider or an X-Cart PRO administrator:

• You can manage all the orders in your store (Study the section #Managing Orders):

- search for orders, - view orders, edit customer notes, add notes that are not visible to customers and modify order details, - update order statuses, - print order invoices and shipping labels, - export orders, - delete orders.

If you are an X-Cart PRO provider:

• You can manage the orders that contain your products (Study the section #Managing Orders):

- search for orders, - view orders, edit customer notes, add notes that are not visible to customers, - assign the status Complete to orders processed by the administrator, - print order invoices and shipping labels, - export orders.

• You cannot delete any orders.

Order Statuses

Statuses of orders paid for by offline payment methods

When a customer chooses to pay for an order using an offline payment method (a payment method that requires manual processing of payment by the store administrator), the order is created with the status Queued. This is the initial status indicating that the order has been created in the store's database and is waiting to be processed by the store administrator.

After an order has been placed with the status Queued, the store administrator must process it: arrange for the payment to be received from the customer and ensure that the order is packed and shipped to the customer. Typically, each store processes orders according to its own workflow. The store administrator can track the stages of the process in X-Cart by manually updating the status of the order at each order processing stage. The following order statuses can be used:

• Processed - The status indicating that the payment has been received by the store.
• Complete - The status indicating that all work on the order has been completed. For example, this status can be assigned to an order by the store administrator or (in X-Cart PRO) by the product provider after the order has been shipped.
• Declined - The status indicating that the order has been canceled by the store administrator. For example, this status may be used when an order is found to be fraudulent.
• Backordered -The status indicating back orders. It can be manually assigned to orders containing products that are temporary out of stock.
• Failed - The status indicating that the payment transaction has not been completed successfully.

Statuses of orders paid for by online payment methods

When a customer chooses to pay for an order using an online payment method, the order is created with the status Not finished. This is the initial status indicating that the order has been created in the store's database, but a response from the online payment processor has not been received yet; the transaction is neither successful nor failed.

After the order has been placed, the online payment processor processes the payment and exchanges information about the status of the payment transaction with X-Cart. X-Cart interprets the information received from the payment processor and automatically updates the order's status. The following statuses may occur:

• Queued - The status indicating that the online payment processor has returned a temporary status indicating waiting (for example, an order processed through PayPal may get the status 'Queued' when PayPal returns 'Pending' status).
• Processed - The status indicating that the payment has been successfully processed by the online payment processor and the amount corresponding to the order total has been received by the store.
• Pre-Authorized - The status indicating that the amount corresponding to the order total has been successfully authorized; this status occurs only in orders paid for using a payment method working in 'Auth only' mode.
• Failed - The status indicating that payment processing has failed.

Orders that receive the status Pre-Authorized require further manual processing by the store administrator: the store administrator must either capture the amount for which authorization was issued or void the transaction. If he or she performs the 'capture' action and the payment is captured successfully, the status of the order is updated to Processed. If he or she performs the 'void' action, the authorization is voided and the order status is updated to Declined. If the store administrator fails to capture or void the authorization within the time limit defined by the payment processor, X-Cart updates the order status to Declined automatically.

Please note that the statuses Complete and Backordered are not assigned to orders paid for by online payment methods automatically. If you wish to use these statuses for orders, you can assign them manually.