What does each order status mean?
The six order stages, their names in the orders list and in the "Change Status" menu, what happens automatically at each one (emails, payment, stock), and which statuses are final.
In this article
Every order in your store goes through stages, from the moment it reaches you until it reaches the customer. The status tells you where the order stands, and it also decides what happens automatically: an email to the customer, the payment being recorded, or items going back into stock.
The stages and their names
Note that the same stage has one name on the tabs of the Orders list and another in the "Change Status" menu on the order page. This table links the two:
| Stage | Name on the list tabs | Name in "Change Status" | Meaning | What happens automatically |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Pending" | "Pending" | A new order nobody has acted on yet. | Every order starts here. |
| 2 | "Confirmed" (list badge: "Accepted") | "Accepted" | You accepted the order and are preparing it. | Email to the customer: the order is being prepared. |
| 3 | "Out for Delivery" | "Shipped" | The order has left with the courier. | Email to the customer: the order has shipped. Cash-on-delivery orders are marked "Paid". |
| 4 | "Completed" | "Completed" | The customer received the order. | Email to the customer: the order is complete. A cash-on-delivery order is marked "Paid" if it wasn't already. |
| 5 | "Cancelled" | "Cancelled" | The order was cancelled. | Cancellation email, items go back to stock, and a paid order is refunded (see the cancellation article). Final. |
| 6 | (no tab — shown under "All Orders") | "Received" | A closing status — see the warning below. | Items go back to stock and the order is marked "Paid". Final. |
If your dashboard is in Arabic, the names in "Change Status" are «بانتظار التأكيد»، «مؤكد»، «قيد الشحن»، «تم التسليم»، «ملغي» and «مستلم».
About "Received": the system treats "Received" as if the order came back (items return to stock, and the order's progress bar shows it as "Returned"), yet the email the customer gets says «تم استلام طلبك … بنجاح» (your order … was received successfully). Because of this mixed behaviour we recommend not using it for now: use "Completed" for a delivered order and "Cancelled" for an order that came back to you.
Final statuses
Once an order is "Cancelled" or "Received", the "Change Status" button disappears and the order can't be reopened. Otherwise you can move an order between stages 1 to 4 in either direction if you made a mistake.
Order status is not payment status
Next to the order status there's a separate payment status: "Unpaid", "Paid" or "Refunded". An order can be shipped and still unpaid, for example. To learn when an order counts as paid, read How do I record that a customer paid?.
What does the customer see?
- An email on each change: when you change the status — with "Change Status" on the order page or with the buttons in the orders list — the customer receives an email with the new status. (The "Pending" stage has no message of its own.)
- The order tracking page: the customer opens it from the tracking link in the order confirmation email or on the order success page, and sees the same status names as in "Change Status".
- "My Orders" in their account: customers with an account see their orders with the same names, e.g. "Shipped" for a shipped order and "Delivered" for a delivered one.
Note: status names are the same for every store on the platform; you can't rename them or add new ones.
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