I want to start a new discussion about order handling in the backoffice. I am basically talking about the overview list and the detail page (AdminOrders Controller). For me this is one of the most important parts of thirtybees. Merchants need to handle orders in an efficient way. That's our daily business!
As you can guess, I am not 100% happy with the system right now. It lacks some features and is not really flexible. I want to use this topic, to discuss the different needs. If many merchants are fighting with the same problems, it should be added/changed in upcoming versions like 1.1.x. This topic could lead to a crowdfunding project later on. Let's get concrete:
High priority
Changing carrier of an order: We could (and probably will) talk a lot about order editing here. I want to be concrete here. We have a lot of customers who orders and some minutes later write an e-mail: "oh please change my shipping to express". Well then you are kind of fucked up with the current system. It must be possible, to change the carrier at least until the products are shipped. It also would be wishful, to be flexible, in editing the cost of a carrier.
Delete an order: I have read in the past: "this is not allowed in europe". I don't know. Here (in switzerland) its allowed. It's not about deleting a correct order. In Dreamland you won't use this feature, but Ecommerce is not Dreamland. Case 1: Some funny guys are just placing test/fake orders. "oh lets test their checkout". Suddenly you have an order from
[email protected]. You wanna get rid of these... Case 2: Customers places an order. Five minutes later the same customer places another order. We as a merchant merge the two orders into one. Then I would like to delete the other one. For second case cancel is probably ok too, but not for the first one.
Products Returns: There is a feature for returning products. In our case it often happens like that: customer just sends the product back without using any FrontOffice feature. If he sends everything back, it works quite good, to just cancel the order. But if he only returns some items, it gets tricky. Too tricky. I can't regenerate the invoice in that case. In don't know if the returning handling should be improved or if a more advanced order editing is better!?
Some more Ideas:
Flexible Overview List: In this forum we often see posts like "how to add shippingmethod or city to order list". Maybe it would be great, to make this list flexible. Let the merchants decide, which columns should show up. This concept could be also interesting for other lists like products or customer. Also the filter options could be better. Imagine you could filter multiple status, wouldnt that be nice?
Multiple Tracking Numbers: Not much to say. Sometimes you have multiple packages for a single order. Unfortunately you can't add multiple tracking codes to an order.
Email Handling: Some emails are just hardcoded. I would like to be more flexible, when an email goes out to the customers. Example 1: if a customer orders and lowers two stock under zero, he will get an email. Do I want that? Maybe, but maybe not. Example 2: if a merchant adds an order trough backoffice. He maybe wants to avoid, that the customer gets the email.
I am sure, that not all these examples are relevant for you. Which are, which aren't? Which did I forget?