The filter you have chosen will now be applied and the list of orders shown below will be updated to only include those orders that match that filter. In my example I would have the list of orders that have a payment status of paid.

Filtering orders by status

Every order has one of three statuses: open, archived or cancelled. A new order starts off as open. It can be archived when you're finished dealing with it or canceled if there's a problem with the order. In the dropdown menu of order filters, click on "Status" to reveal the dropdown menu with the selection of order statuses. You can also click "any" in the dropdown to see orders with all order statuses.

Filter orders by payment status

You can also filter the list of orders by the status of the payment related to the order. There are seven payment statuses:

• Paid or partially paid: When a credit card payment has been captured, or a payment using an offline or custom payment method (bank transfer or money order for example) has been marked as received, the status of the payment will be "paid". When you capture the payment for an order, you can specify how much you want to capture, anything up to the full value of the order. If you capture less than the full amount the order will have a payment status of "partially paid".
• Pending: Orders that have a "pending" status have been paid using one of the offline or custom payment methods. You'll need to verify you have received the payment and mark it as received to change the status to "paid".
• Authorized: You may remember from the last chapter that credit card transactions have two key steps: authorization and capture. Depending on your checkout settings, payments will either be captured manually or automatically. If you are set up for manual capture then new credit card payments will have a status of "authorized".

• Refunded, partially refunded or voided: When you cancel an order, the payment status will change to either "refunded" or "voided". For an order where the payment has not yet been captured, the authorization will be "voided". For orders with captured payments, the payment will be "refunded". If you partially refund an order with a captured payment, the status will be "partially refunded".

Filter orders by shipping status

Orders can also be filtered by fulfillment status. There are three options: fulfilled, partially fulfilled or not fulfilled.

• Not fulfilled: When an order first comes in, it will be marked as "not fulfilled". That is unless you have selected to automatically capture the payment and "automatically fulfill all of the order's line items" in the checkout settings.
  
• Partial: If you have shipped some but not all the items in an order, the order will be marked as partially fulfilled. You can come back later, fulfill the rest of the items and the order will then be fully fulfilled.
• Fulfilled: When you have shipped all the items of an order, it will be fulfilled.

Searching For Specific Orders

There is also an excellent search facility for when you need to find a specific order or group of similar orders. You can search for orders by the customer's name or address. You can even type in a payment or fulfillment status, like "paid" for example to see all paid orders. Of course, wherever you are in the admin, you can also use the search facility in the upper navigation. You can find orders in this way too.

Remember, underneath the Filter orders button, there are the active filters, the filters that have already been applied to the list of orders. These may result in you not finding the order you need. Just click on the x on an active filter to remove it.

Sorting The List Of Orders

Above the list of orders you'll see the column names "ORDER", "DATE", "PLACED BY", "PAYMENT STATUS", "FULFILLMENT STATUS" AND "TOTAL". Every order will have each of these important bits of information displayed.

When you first come into the section, the orders will be displayed from the most recent to the oldest. You can sort the orders however based on the information contained in any column. So for example I sorted them by total in the screenshot. Just click once on the column of your choice and click a second time to reverse the order.

The Quick Way To Archive Orders And Capture Payments

You will notice the familiar checkboxes to the left of each order. You can select one or more orders by selecting the checkboxes for the orders you are interested in. When you do so, the button Bulk actions will be revealed and clicking that will reveal a menu which you can use to: archive, unarchive or capture payments for the selected orders.

In the screenshot above, I selected order #1017 and chose to capture it's payment. You can see how that order's payment status has changed above.

Managing The Order Fulfillment

Once the payment has been received, it's time to organize the fulfillment or to put it more simply, the packing and shipping of the order. Shopify can keep a note of the details of the fulfillment for an order so that you can easily find them when needed. It can also automatically send the customer an email with the tracking number for the shipping of their order.

The items included in an order are called the line items. It's a more general term than product, it could also include services for example. To mark an order or a selection of its line items as fulfilled, follow these steps:

• On the order that you want to fulfill, you'll notice that each line item has a checkbox. For the items you want to fulfill, make sure that the checkbox is selected. Deselect those that you are not fulfilling now.

• On the order that you want to fulfill, click the Fulfill x line items button.
  

• This will reveal a menu for the fulfillment. Type in the tracking number for the shipment: you may be able to copy and paste this from the software of your shipping provider.
  
• Shopify will guess which shipping provider you are using if it recognizes the format of the tracking number you entered. A dropdown list with the shipping provider selected will be shown. If the shipping provider is not correct, you can select the correct one from the dropdown list.
• Leave the Email shipment notification to customer checkbox selected if you want the customer to be automatically emailed the details of the fulfillment including the tracking number. This email will be based on the template in the notifications settings. Deselect the checkbox if you don't want to send an email.

• Click the Fulfill selected line items button to confirm the fulfillment. The line items will now refresh and those that have been fulfilled will be marked as fulfilled: you will see a graphic of a little green truck beside them.

The order will now be marked as either fully or partially fulfilled depending on whether you included all the line items or not. If you chose to send an email notification to the customer that will have been sent. Sometimes a customer will make a mistake in their email address: in this case you'll have to send them the tracking code separately by email.

Not all the shipment providers in the world are included in the dropdown list. If yours is not included and you want to send customers the tracking codes then follow the instructions on the Shopify Support site.

Cancelling An Order

From time to time you will need to cancel an order. Perhaps the customer returned the order or you never received the payment for the order. Depending on your Shopify plan, you may pay transaction fees. When you cancel an order, the transaction fees are reimbursed on the next invoice. Follow these steps to cancel an order:

• On the order you want to cancel, click the Cancel order button at the top right of the page.

• On the pop-up that appears, you can then specify the reason for the cancellation and what needs to be done to follow up on the cancellation. In the dropdown menu, choose the reason for the cancellation.

• This next step will change a bit depending on the payment method used and whether the payment has been received or not. If the payment has not yet been captured, Shopify can request your payment gateway to void the authorization. To do so, just make sure that the Void authorization checkbox is selected.
• If the payment has already been captured then Shopify can request that your payment gateway refund partially or fully the payment. To do so, make sure that the Refund payment checkbox is selected and type in how much you want to refund the customer.

• You have the option to restock products that have already been fulfilled using the Restock items checkbox. If the order has only been partially fulfilled, only the unfulfilled items will be restocked.
• To send an email to the customer confirming the cancellation, ensure the checkbox Send a notification email to the customer is selected. This email will be based on the template in the notifications settings.
• Double-check everything before you finalize the cancellation. As it states "Cancelling an order is final and there is no undo." Click Cancel order to confirm the cancellation.

The order and its history will be updated. You will now be able to find this order in the orders section with the other orders that have a status "cancelled'.

Refunding A Payment

If you'd like to refund a payment in full or partially, you can do this using the Refund payment button that is visible once a payment has been received. Clicking it will reveal a menu where you can enter how much should be refunded to the customer. Not all payment gateways will allow Shopify to make refunds so double-check if yours does.

Note refunding the order will not cancel the order. If you wish to, you can do this separately by clicking on the Cancel order as described previously. For orders involving cancellations or refunds, it's a very good idea to leave a clear note on the order that explains what exactly happened, if any products were sent, how much was refunded, etc. When it comes to doing your accounts, you'll be pleased to have the extra information.