Managing orders

Find storefront checkout orders under Sales in the admin, alongside your quotes and invoices. This article covers the orders your customers place at checkout. Orders you create yourself in Sales are commercial records that don't carry the checkout controls described below — see Sales records & statuses for those. A checkout order moves through a status lifecycle as you work it, and its fulfillment (what's shipped) is tracked separately — see Fulfillment.

Find an order

Sales lists every sales record, and Sales → Orders narrows the view to just orders. Open a checkout order's record, then select Manage Order in Order management to reveal its status, note and cancellation controls.

Looking specifically at storefront checkout activity? Operations → Checkout orders is a checkout-only compatibility list showing each order's number, customer, item count, status, total, and date, with a status filter to narrow the list to one stage — Pending, Confirmed, Processing, Completed, or Cancelled. Its entries open the same order.

What an order shows

The order page lays out the customer's name, email, and phone; the line items with quantities and prices; and the subtotal, tax, and total. These details are a record of the order as placed — line items aren't edited after the fact. Under Manage Order, use Merchant Note for private team context that customers never see. Select Save Changes to save the note.

The status lifecycle

An order's status tracks where it is in your workflow. Ordinary progress moves forward one step at a time. Whole-order cancellation is a separate action with its own eligibility checks.

Status	What it means
Pending	Placed but not yet confirmed.
Confirmed	Confirmed and ready to work. Check the payment record separately.
Processing	You're preparing the order.
Completed	Done. This is a final state.
Cancelled	Called off. Also final.

Select Manage Order, choose the next Processing Status, then select Save Changes. Ordinary progress is Pending → Confirmed → Processing → Completed. The dropdown only offers valid next steps, so you can't skip from Pending straight to Completed. Completed and Cancelled are final; you can't move an order back out of them. Use Returns & refunds for goods already handed to a carrier or customer.

Cancelling an order

An Owner or Admin can request whole-order cancellation while the order is Pending, Confirmed, or Processing. It covers the whole order and all of its active unshipped fulfillments. Goods already handed to a carrier or customer are ineligible; use Returns & refunds instead.

Open the checkout order and review its shipments, returns, and payment activity.
Select Manage Order, then Cancel whole order… under Whole-Order Cancellation.
Enter the required reason and review the confirmation.
Select Cancel whole order to submit the request, or Keep order active to leave without submitting it.
Check the result. If cancellation is still running, use Refresh cancellation status.

A submitted request is not proof that the order was cancelled or its stock released; check the result. cartonium asks the carrier to void paid outbound labels first. You do not need to void each label separately before requesting whole-order cancellation. While cancellation is active, do not prepare, hand off, or separately cancel a shipment; status changes are also paused.

Result	What to do
Whole-order cancellation requested, Waiting for carrier-label voids, or Finishing whole-order cancellation	Wait and refresh the cancellation status. The order remains active until cancellation finishes.
Cancellation needs review or Historical shipment history needs review	Keep the goods on hold and contact cartonium support with the order number and visible message. The order and stock reservations remain active.
Order was not cancelled	Review the reason and carrier result before deciding what to do next. If Try whole-order cancellation again… is offered, use it only after resolving the reported problem.
Order cancelled	The order and its active unshipped fulfillments are cancelled, and remaining stock reservations are released.

The collapsed Order management summary uses shorter labels, such as Waiting for Postage Void. Open Manage Order for the detailed result and available recovery actions. Save Changes saves status and notes; cancellation uses its own confirmation above.

If the submission result is uncertain, use Retry exact cancellation in the same dialog. It repeats the original request safely; do not start a new cancellation in another tab. An active return, unresolved payment/refund, or shipment-history problem can prevent cancellation. Follow the displayed message or ask support rather than changing those records just to bypass the check.

Only completed cancellation makes the remaining reserved stock available again (see Stock levels). Cancellation does not refund the customer or send an order-cancellation email. Arrange any refund and customer communication separately, and verify the refund result. Voiding postage does not itself confirm a credit from the carrier. Cancelled is final, so cancel deliberately.

Status vs. fulfillment

An order's status and its fulfillment are independent: an order can be Confirmed but still unfulfilled, or Processing with some items already shipped. Status is your workflow stage; fulfillment is what's physically gone out the door. Fulfillment covers the other half.

Who can do this

Any team member can view orders. Owners and Admins can change an order's status and edit notes, and so can Staff granted the Orders and fulfillment permission group. Whole-order cancellation is limited to Owners and Admins; the Staff permission group does not grant it. Staff without the group see orders read-only. See Team & permissions.

Fulfillment — marking orders shipped
Stock levels & adjustments — how orders move stock
Audit log — a record of who changed what