Sales and order status question

When I look at a sale or order I have 4 status choices.

I cant remember where but I know I can change them or the wording.

I have :
1] Pending which I assume means I have an order.......
2] Processing............ I do not know what this means?
3] Delivered........ the result of my changing the text in the forgotten place
4] Update.......... which I am hoping is a reminder that the item is shipped maybe???

What is the best list of the 4 choices??? I am thinking that pending, then processing while I package etc........... then I am lost

Any advice is appreciated!

Mike

Hi Mike

To change your wording: Admin, Localisation, Orders Status.

I have mine changed to:
Pending (ordered but not paid)
Processing (paid - you can set your payment modules to change the status to processing)
Shipped (I do this manually & have the shipping notification plugin which tells people their tracking code)
Cancelled (this doesn't add back the stock, I need to do this manually).

Some people pay me by bank transfer or the payment fails, their orders stay in pending until I manually change them to processing (check the bank in the morning) & then I ship everything in processing.

The default choices didn't make sense to me so I made my own.

Hope this helps.

Yes and thanks it does help...... I mainly try to do all the shipping thru paypal and have been setting the order to shipped with no email sent and leave it there.

Pending = "Received an order for which payment is still pending, ie: unpaid" -- example: waiting for a check/moneyorder to arrive in the mail

Processing = "Paid order received. We are "processing" the order in our warehouse to ready it for shipping"

Delivered = "Has been shipped"

Update = "This is a special status which is used to re-activate expired downloads on an order containing virtual items." - Has nothing to do with shipping.

Many thanks........... SOmetimes newbs need a little more info in the directions. Like me. I was wanting to use an add on for managing as it is hard to buy shipping on paypal or USPS siteand then add tracking number to order.

ParseRaider:

Many thanks........... SOmetimes newbs need a little more info in the directions. Like me. I was wanting to use an add on for managing as it is hard to buy shipping on paypal or USPS siteand then add tracking number to order.
You can just copy/paste the tracking number from "their" site into the admin comments area of the order on "your" site and click update. That makes the tracking number visible to both you and your customer.

Oh Cool. I am a little scared to do much as i dont want emails clogging my customers mailboxes. Thanks!

ParseRaider:

Oh Cool. I am a little scared to do much as i dont want emails clogging my customers mailboxes. Thanks!
You can click the checkbox to "not email the customer" whenever you do an admin update there.

DrByte:

You can just copy/paste the tracking number from "their" site into the admin comments area of the order on "your" site and click update. That makes the tracking number visible to both you and your customer.

It is not something that fits everyone's needs but when/if you use Stamps.com or ShipStation.com (uses Stamps.com account), tracking numbers are posted back to the zencart order comments automatically along with sending an email with tracking info to the customer (if so desired).

DrByte:

You can click the checkbox to "not email the customer" whenever you do an admin update there.

It would take me a bit to look through my notes, but there is a relatively easy code change to change the default from Notify Customer-email to default Notify Customer - NO email (that small change sure simplified our life when adding comments to orders)

I tryed Stamps.com the other day and it crashed my server big time! We do not know why and it did it like 4 hours after we installed the program. I got ahold of Stamps people and we could not figure the problem. The file they have you upload for zencart is like 1/3 the databites that the one in zencart that it replaced. Also it was for an earlier version of zencart . At any rate we got it back online but I have not recieved any word from Stamps about a fix and they also said no one else had problems.
I will try again if we ever start selling any amount.

Try ShipStation. They're owned by Stamps.com but have customer service reps that actually know what they are talking about. Setup is straight forward.

I was hoping that they would be better by not. Stamps.com support for their ecommerce interface is one of the worst that I've ever had to contact. Setup is convoluted and a PIA.

Yeah we know it was the stamps.com ap that did it but noone has commented since. I spent 3 hours online with their support making sure they knew and asking what I could do to help.

I highly recommend Shipstation. My order fulfillment became overwhelming, It is like I hired a shipping clerk who works for peanuts, now I'm not just the only one.