Order states: how to do it!?

[wakabayashi]

I wonder, how you handle your order states? Do you have some custom states like "Customer complaint" or anything like this?

If yes, when do you activate "shipped" or "paid"? I have looked into the code and IMO it's not possible to set this things correctly up.

Here are my order states. Would be interesting to see, how other merchants are using this feature:

Edited November 16, 2022 by wakabayashi

[30knees]

We do it similar to how you do it. There are many order states that have been introduced by modules but we don't use them and the modules mostly don't, either.

Basically, we have:

• Awaiting bank payment
• Paid (and variants for payment modules)
• Being prepared for shipping
• Shipped
• Shipped - Unpaid
• Refunded
• Cancelled
• Delivered

Bold indicates paid and italics indicates shipped. Bold and italic indicates both states.

 

[wakabayashi]

Thanks a lot! Your example is great to underline my point. The fact, that you need "Shipped" and "Shipped - Unpaid" shows the problem I see in the current system. I have thought about this "solution" too, but it would ask for a lot of additional states in my case.

I wonder about a few things:

• "Being prepared for shipping". How do you know, if its paid? Wouldn't you need there two states as well?
• "Refunded". Does this mean, that this products are always returned and sellable again? Are you using AdvancedStockManagement? Cause if yes, there happens an auto restock imo.
• You are from germany, right? Looks like a DACH setup, like mine.

Sorry for the questions, but I really think this system could need some cleanups/improvements. 

 

[30knees]

4 hours ago, wakabayashi said:

• "Being prepared for shipping". How do you know, if its paid? Wouldn't you need there two states as well?
• "Refunded". Does this mean, that this products are always returned and sellable again? Are you using AdvancedStockManagement? Cause if yes, there happens an auto restock imo.
• You are from germany, right? Looks like a DACH setup, like mine.

"Being prepared for shipping" is actually "DHL - erfasst". I just translated it for the forum. It's when the shipment has been electronically generated with DHL. We only do this once the order is paid. Only in rare circumstances do we ship when it's unpaid, for example because we know the B2C customer or it's a B2B order.

Refunded - no, unfortunately. It can mean we just refunded or that something was returned and is sellable. In the latter case, though, we typically do "cancel". It's not clean but it works as a hack. The whole refund system is somewhat a mess. Also, the states don't play too well with third party modules, eg for VAT calculation.

We don't use ASM because we've heard of all the problems with it.

I agree with you, the system could use some improvement.