Order Actions

To help you move orders forward through the fulfillment process, each order listed in the View Orders page has an Action menu to the far right. Clicking it reveals the actions that can be performed for an order, such as editing the details of the order, shipping the products, and refunding a payment, just to name a few.

• To view orders, print invoices, print packing slips, resend invoices, view notes, view shipments, and view the order timeline, the Manage Orders permission must be enabled on your user account.
• To edit orders, the Manage Orders and Edit Orders permissions must be enabled on your user account.
• To send messages, the Manage Orders and Order Messages permissions must be enabled on your user account.
• To create a shipment, the Manage Orders and Manage Shipping permissions must be enabled on your user account.
• To issue refunds, the Manage Orders and Refund Orders permissions must be enabled on your user account.
• To void transactions and capture funds, the Manage Orders and Capture Funds permissions must be enabled on your user account.

Performing actions on an order will change the status of the order, but manually changing the order status will not perform an action. For example, if you want to refund a customer's order, you will need to use the refund action in this menu. Changing the order status in the drop-down menu will not refund the order.

See the list below to learn more about available order actions:

• Edit order — Edit the billing address, cart contents, shipping address, shipping method, payment method, and discount charges on an existing order. See Editing an Order for more information.
• Print invoice — Print a paper or save a PDF invoice containing pertinent order information. See Editing and Printing Invoices for more information.
• Print packing slip — Print a paper or save a PDF packing slip containing pertinent shipment information. See Printing Packing Slips for more information.
• Resend invoice — Send a copy of the invoice to the email address associated with the customer.
• Send message* — Send an order message to a customer.
• View notes* — Add and see any Order Comments and Staff Notes about the order. Order Comments are visible on invoices; Staff Notes are only viewable in the control panel and are not seen by customers.
• Ship items — Create a shipment which specifies a carrier, service, tracking number, and shipping notes.
• View shipments* — View details, update tracking numbers, and print packing slips for order shipments. This action will only appear if the Ship Items action has been used.
• Refund — Allows you to partially or fully refund an order.
• Void transaction — Cancel the order and release any funds that may have been authorized. This action will only appear if the order was placed using an authorize only compatible payment gateway.
• Capture funds — Captures funds on an order with authorized payment. This action will only appear if the order was placed using an authorize only compatible payment gateway.
• View order timeline* — View timeline events pertaining to the order such as when the payment was authorized, the amount that was captured, tax events, and past refunds.

*These actions are explained in more detail below.

Customers who have chosen to create an account can send messages about specific orders through their account page on the storefront. This feature is not available to guests.

Order message email notifications are sent to the email address defined in your Order Notifications settings. New order messages will generate an alert in the control panel dashboard. Orders with messages also display an icon on the View Orders page next to the order.

Clicking the message notification will take you to the View Messages page where you can reply by using the Send a Message button. In the control panel, the sender of the order message is the user's email address, unless it's the Store Owner user, in which case it appears as admin.

View order timeline provides details about an order's transactional history. An icon will appear on the View Orders page next to the order.

Clicking the icon will take you to the Order timeline page where you will find tax calculations, notifications of when payment authorization or capture took place, status changes, specifics of past refunds, and other event details. Note that the View order timeline shows the date/time of an order based on the customers' local device time, not the timezone configured for the store.

The View notes option allows you to add order comments or staff notes to an order without having to go through the edit an order workflow. Order Comments are visible on invoices, while Staff Notes are only visible in the control panel and are not seen by customers.

Individual icons will appear on the View Orders page next to the order to indicate whether Staff Notes or Order Comments have been added.

Clicking on either icon will open a popup window where notes can be added or edited.

The View shipments option will only appear if the Ship items action has been used. View shipments allows you to see the details of the shipment, update the tracking number, and print a packing slip — all without the need to visit the View shipments page.

The following order actions can be performed in bulk:

• Print Invoice
• Print Packing Slip
• Resend Invoice
• Capture Funds

To perform a bulk action, check the box to the left of each desired order, then select the action from the Choose an action drop-down menu and click Confirm.

See Viewing Orders for more information on other actions that can be applied in bulk.

Can the Resend invoice action use an invoice email template from an email marketing app?

The Resend invoice action sends a copy of the invoice using the Order Email template found in Marketing › Transactional Emails. If you are using an email marketing app, such as MailChimp or Klaviyo, and have disabled BigCommerce email templates, the Resend invoice action will not send the invoice email. Resend the invoice from the app in order to use any invoice templates you've configured there.