Orders

Orders are a key part of Solidus. The orders user interface is especially complex because orders connect many of the other major parts of the Solidus admin – like payments, shipments, taxes, and customer profiles.

To make sense of orders, this section of the guide explains orders in the context of a typical ecommerce store that sells basic physical products (like t-shirts), and it links out to other related parts of the users guide.

What is an order?

Every time that a customer orders product(s) from your store, a new order is created. But Solidus starts tracking orders before they are placed: as soon as a customer has put something in their cart, a new order is generated.

There are many related database objects that "make up" an order, and are created in service of an order:

• Customer : Every order requires an associated customer (also called a user).
• Shipments: An order may have one or many shipments associated with it.
• Adjustments: Additional charges (taxes and shipping fees) and credits ( promotional discounts ) are tied to the order.
• Payments: An order may have one or more payments associated with it. For example, a customer may use a gift card and a credit card to make a purchase. They might also require a refund if a product is defective.
• RMAs and returns: If a customer decides to return an order for some reason, return authorizations, return items, and reimbursements are created and tracked against the original order.

All of these objects can be viewed in the context of the order – or in their own sections of the Solidus admin.

Order states

Before an order is marked as Complete, orders go through a number of other states. By default, the following states are available:

• Cart: A customer has placed product(s) in the cart.
• Address: The customer has begun checkout and has not yet provided their billing and/or shipping addresses.
• Delivery: The customer needs to choose from available shipping options.
• Payment: The customer needs to provide payment information.
• Confirm: The customer needs to confirm that the input checkout information is correct.
• Complete: The customer has submitted their order.

Once an order has been completed, payments and shipments can start to be processed by your store. Note that both payments and shipments have their own, separate state sets.