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Processing an order relates to everything you can and must do to it after the customer places it: taking the money, sending the goods, changing what was bought, and calling the sale off when it cannot go ahead. All of it happens on the order’s own page, which carries the whole history of the sale. The page is built from several cards, each covering a part of that history, and most of them carrying an action you can take. Most orders need only two of those jobs, collecting payment and fulfilling. The rest are for when something changes: a customer adds an item, an address was wrong, or the order has to be stopped. To process an order, navigate to Orders in the admin dashboard and click an order’s number.

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How to Take a Payment

Whether an order needs anything from you here depends on how your store charges customers. That is set by When to charge customers, which is a store-wide default setting that any payment method can override. See Payment Methods. So an order can arrive already paid, be paid by the act of fulfilling it, or sit waiting for someone to take the money. The order’s Payment badge tells you which: Paid needs nothing from you, while Authorized means the money is reserved but not yet taken. A method such as Check, where the customer promises to pay another way, behaves like Manually: the payment is recorded against the order at checkout and waits for you to capture it once the money arrives.

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Capturing an Authorized Payment

The capture confirmation on an authorized payment An authorized payment shows as Authorized on the Payments card, and the order’s badge reads Authorized too.
  1. Open the payment’s Actions menu on the Payments card.
  2. Choose Capture and confirm.
The payment’s state changes to Completed, and the Payment total and Outstanding balance update. The order’s badge becomes Paid once the balance reaches zero, or Partially paid if the capture covers only part of the total.
An authorization only covers the amount it was taken for. If you add items to an order after the card was authorized, the authorization may no longer cover the new total, so check the Outstanding balance after capturing.
Capturing more than the order was authorized for is possible with some payment providers, which matters in B2B where a total can rise after the order is placed. Whether it works, and by how much, is your provider’s decision rather than Spree’s, so check with yours before relying on it. An order whose captured payments come to more than its total carries the Overcharged status.

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Voiding a Payment

Void on a payment’s Actions menu cancels a payment at the gateway. On an authorized payment, which is the usual case, that releases the hold on the customer’s card before any money moves. Void a payment when the order is not going ahead, when the authorization was taken for the wrong amount and a fresh one is needed, or when the customer wants to pay by another method instead. Leaving a dead authorization in place keeps the customer’s funds tied up until their bank releases it on its own, which can take days.
Void is offered on a captured payment as well as an authorized one, but what happens then is your payment provider’s decision rather than Spree’s. Some accept it as a same-day cancellation that never reaches the customer’s statement, and others refuse it and expect a refund instead. For money that has genuinely moved, the dependable route back is a return or canceling the order with Refund the customer switched on.

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Adding a Payment to an Order

The Add payment dialog, with its method, amount and capture switch A payment made outside the checkout does not usually need adding by hand. If your store offers a method such as Check, the customer picks it at checkout and the payment is already recorded against the order, waiting for you to capture it when the money arrives. Adding a payment is for when an order ends up short:
  • The payment it was placed with failed, was declined or was voided afterwards.
  • An edit raised the order’s total, and the difference has to be collected separately.
  1. On the Payments card, click Add.
  2. Choose the Payment method.
  3. Check the Amount, which is filled in with what the order still owes. Change it to record part of it.
  4. Switch on Capture immediately if the money is already in your hands. Leave it off to record the payment now and capture it when the money arrives.
  5. Click Add.
A payment added without capturing does not change what the order owes. Capture it later from its Actions menu.
The amount offered counts only money already captured, so on an order whose original payment is still authorized it offers the whole total. Check the figure before you click Add.
Building an order for a customer is a different job, and adding its payment is part of that flow. See Draft Orders.

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How to Fulfill an Order

The fulfillment form with its items, tracking number and carrier Fulfilling records that the goods have left your warehouse, and is the moment the customer gets their tracking number.
  1. On the Fulfillments card, click Mark as fulfilled. The parcel’s box turns into a form with every item ticked and a running count of units to ship.
  2. Check the items and quantities.
  3. Enter the Tracking number, if you have not added one already.
  4. Choose the Shipping carrier, or leave it on Detect automatically.
  5. Leave the notification box ticked to email the customer, or untick it to fulfill quietly.
  6. Click Fulfill items.
The fulfillment badge changes to Fulfilled, and the parcel’s box shows the carrier and the tracking number as a link. The box then offers Mark as delivered for when the parcel arrives. With the notification left ticked, the customer receives an email carrying the order number, the tracking number and a link to the carrier’s site.
An order whose goods have already been sent cannot be canceled. If the customer no longer wants the order after it has shipped, use a return instead.

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Printing a Packing Slip

Open the parcel’s Actions menu on the Fulfillments card and choose Print packing slip. It opens in a new tab, carrying the order and fulfillment numbers, the ship-to address, the stock location it ships from, and the products, quantities and prices. A packing slip, showing the ship-to address and the products to pack If the customer’s shipping address needs correcting, do so before printing, because the slip uses the address saved on the order.

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Adding a Tracking Number

Open the parcel’s Actions menu, choose Add tracking, enter the number, choose the carrier or leave it on Detect automatically, and click Save. Tracking can be added before or after you fulfill, but adding it first is worth the habit. The shipment email carries the tracking link, so a number added beforehand reaches the customer with the email that tells them their parcel is on its way. Added afterwards, the email has already gone without it. A tracking link is the cheapest thing you can give a customer after they have paid. It answers “where is my order” without anyone writing to you, and it turns the wait between payment and delivery into something they can watch rather than wonder about.

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How to Edit an Order

Taking the payment and sending the goods covers most orders, but processing is also where an order gets corrected. A customer calls to add an item, a line was entered at the wrong price, something is out of stock and has to be swapped, or a goodwill discount is agreed after the sale. Each of those is changed in a different place on the order. The rest of the page is a record that keeps itself: the Summary, the Taxes card, Special instructions and Metadata are all read-only, and the Orders page explains what each card holds.

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How to Add or Remove Line Items

The order editor, with a unit price, quantity and line total for each product Click Edit order at the top of the page. It is available on a placed order, not just a draft. The editor lists one row per product, with its Unit price, Quantity and line total.
  • Add product puts another item on the order.
  • Remove takes a line off.
  • Change a line’s Quantity to match what the customer now wants.
Save stays disabled until you change something. Totals are recalculated once you save, rather than as you type.
Unit prices cannot be changed on a placed order. Setting a price per line is part of building a draft order, where a price can be agreed with a business buyer before the order is placed. To take money off an order that is already placed, add a discount instead.
Editing an order does not change a payment already taken. Compare the new Total with the Payment total in the Summary afterwards, and settle any difference with the customer.

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How to Update an Address

The Edit shipping address dialog Open the Actions menu on the Customer card and choose Edit Shipping Address or Edit Billing Address. Only the address you edit changes. The order’s totals stay as they were, even where the new address would be taxed differently or carry a different delivery price.
Correct an address before printing a packing slip or fulfilling, because both use the address saved on the order at the time.

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How to Edit or Split a Fulfillment

On the Fulfillments card, open a parcel’s Actions menu.
  • Edit changes where the parcel ships from and which delivery method carries it. Ships from lists your stock locations, marking any that cannot cover the order as out of stock, and Delivery method lists the methods that reach the address, with their prices.
  • Split divides a parcel in two, so part of an order can go now and the rest follow. Each half then has its own tracking, carrier and status.
  • Cancel cancels that parcel.
A fulfillment's Actions menu, showing Edit, Split and the other parcel actions Splitting suits an order whose items cannot sensibly travel together. One is in stock and another is not, so the customer gets what is ready rather than waiting for the whole order. Or the goods need different handling altogether: a lamp goes by parcel carrier while a sofa needs a two-person delivery.
Where products routinely ship differently, delivery profiles can separate them at checkout, so the order arrives already split rather than needing splitting by hand.

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How to Process Returns, Exchanges and Claims

Anything that comes back, or goes wrong, after the sale starts from its own card on the order. Each has a process of its own:
  • Returns - Goods the customer sends back for a refund.
  • Exchanges - Goods swapped for something else.
  • Claims - Goods that arrived damaged or never arrived at all.

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How to Add a Discount

The Add discount form, with its label, value, type and target On the Discounts card, click Add discount. This creates a discount by hand, rather than one a promotion or coupon applied. A discount applied to the whole order is spread across its items rather than sitting on one of them.

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How to Add a Fee

The Add fee form, with its label, amount, kind and target On the Fees card, click Add fee. Fees cover anything added to the price after the sale.
Adding a discount or a fee changes what the order comes to, but not what has already been paid. Check the Outstanding balance afterwards.

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How to Apply a Gift Card

On the Discounts & Credit card, click Apply beside Gift card and enter the card’s code. The card pays what it can of the order, and the Outstanding balance drops by that amount. See Gift Cards. The Discount code on the same card is a record of the code the customer used at checkout, and cannot be changed afterwards. To take money off an order that is already placed, add a discount by hand as described above.

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How to Add Notes and Tags

Both sit on the right of the order, each with a pencil for editing.
  • Internal note is what your team should know about this order, such as a phone call with the customer. It takes formatted text, and only staff see it.
  • Tags are short labels such as VIP or gift-wrap. They are the quickest way to find a group of orders again, using the Tags filter on the orders list.
Two more on the same side are edited the same way:
  • Special instructions is what the customer asked for at checkout, such as where to leave a parcel. It normally comes from them, but it can be corrected afterwards, for example when a customer phones in a change of instructions.
  • Purchase order is the buyer’s own reference, which you can also search and filter the orders list by.

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How to Add Custom Field Values

The Custom fields card on an order Custom fields holds the extra order fields your store has defined, each edited in place on the order. They suit anything your team needs to record against an order that Spree has no field for, such as a preferred delivery date, a gift message, whether installation was booked, or the account manager looking after the sale. Which fields appear, and which are required, is set under Custom Fields.

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How to Cancel an Order

Only an order that has not been sent can be canceled. Once any of its goods have gone, the sale has happened, and the way back is a return rather than a cancellation. So cancel an order while it is still unfulfilled: the customer changed their mind, the order is a duplicate, the goods turned out to be out of stock, or the payment was declined. Open More actions at the top of the order and choose Cancel order. The More actions menu with Cancel order The form asks for the following. The Cancel order form, with its reason, note and refund and email switches
Refund the customer and Email the customer both start switched off. Decide on each before you confirm.
Click Cancel order to confirm, or Keep order to back out. The order’s badge changes to Canceled, its fulfillment is canceled, and the stock held for it is free to sell again. The Summary records when it was canceled, by whom, and the reason and note.

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How to Resend the Order Confirmation

If a customer says the confirmation never arrived, open More actions and choose Resend Confirmation. The customer receives the confirmation again, marked as a resend in the subject line, carrying the full order summary.

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Further Reading

  • Orders - The orders list, its filters and the status badges
  • Returns - Goods a customer sends back
  • Exchanges - Swapping one item for another
  • Claims - Goods that arrived damaged or never arrived
  • Draft Orders - Building an order for a customer before it is placed