ChannelEngine: orders
About this article
This article describes the processing of orders on ChannelEngine.
Table of contents
Introduction
ChannelEngine supports the management and automation of orders made on a marketplace. The way orders are handled depends on how your webstore or merchant system is connected with ChannelEngine. If a webstore is automated, ChannelEngine hooks into its existing order process, and the whole process is fully automated. If you only have a product feed and use ChannelEngine as a standalone platform to handle orders, some manual actions are required.
To better understand how the order flow works, check out the Merchant API data flow: orders, shipments, and cancelations chart.
Order overview
The example below shows what your order overview might look like on ChannelEngine. You can see the ChannelEngine order ID, the name of the channel, the order number, the order date, the order status, the customer's invoice address, and the total order amount. The order status can vary as explained in the Order status section of this guide.
The 'eye' icon on the right-hand side can be clicked to show each order's details. If an order is still marked as New or In progress, you see a 'truck' icon to create a shipment for it.
At the top of the order overview, you can search for orders based on specific information, such as their channel order number. To find orders based on their order ID or order number (merchant or channel), use the search with the Order ID/no. filter.
You can search for partial matches by entering one or more characters of an order ID or order number (merchant or channel). E.g.: searching for 1 returns any orders where the ID or number contains the number 1. You can also search multiple IDs or numbers at once. For multiple order ID or number searches, only exact matches are returned. Make sure you enter a space between the IDs or numbers when you search.
If you have permission to access customer data, use the search with the Customer data filter in the Order ID/no. dropdown to find orders based on specific customer data - billing first name, last name, company name, street name, and email.
Other filters include status, fulfillment, date range, acknowledgement, and late unshipped orders. The filters can also be combined to get a specific order overview, such as 'all shipped FBA orders from all five Amazon EU channels in March 2022' or 'all late unshipped orders'.
You can export the current filter results as a CSV file. Additionally, you can generate invoices and packing slips in PDF format. For invoice and packing slip generation, you can select up to 250 orders at a time. If you need to select more than 250 orders, ChannelEngine creates a file and emails you a download link. To generate annual or monthly invoice reports, use the date range filter.
The data comprised in the export is:
- Billing address - city
- Billing address - company name
- Billing address - country code
- Billing address - first name
- Billing address - last name
- Billing address - gender
- Billing address - house number
- Billing address - house number addition
- Billing address - original
- Billing address - region
- Billing address - street name
- Billing address - zip code
- Order line - channel product number
- Order line - condition
- Order line - GTIN
- Order line - fee (fixed)
- Order line - fee (rate)
- Order line - fulfilled by marketplace
- Order line - total (excl. VAT/sales tax)
- Order line - total (incl. VAT/sales tax)
- Order line - VAT/sales tax
- Order line - merchant product number
- Order line - original fee (fixed)
- Order line - original line total (excl. VAT/sales tax)
- Order line - original line total (incl. VAT/sales tax)
- Order line - original line VAT/sales tax
- Order line - original unit price (excl. VAT/sales tax)
- Order line - original unit price (incl. VAT/sales tax)
- Order line - original unit VAT/sales tax
- Order line - product name
- Order line - purchase price
- Order line - quantity
- Order line - refund amount (excl. VAT/sales tax)
- Order line - refund amount (incl. VAT/sales tax)
- Order line - shipped from (country)
- Order line - stock location ID
- Order line - unit price (excl. VAT/sales tax)
- Order line - unit price (incl. VAT/sales tax)
- Order line - unit VAT/sales tax
- Order line - unit VAT/sales tax rate
- Order line - unit VAT/sales tax rate type
- Order - acknowledge date
- Order - channel customer number
- Order - channel name
- Order - channel order number
- Order - channel order support
- Order - comment
- Order - commercial order number
- Order - company registration number
- Order - currency code
- Order - email address
- Order - extra data
- Order - extra data (VAT/sales tax calculation method key)
- Order - ID
- Order - invoice number
- Order - merchant order number
- Order - order date
- Order - original shipping costs (excl. VAT/sales tax)
- Order - original shipping costs (incl. VAT/sales tax)
- Order - original shipping costs VAT/sales tax
- Order - payment method
- Order - phone number
- Order - shipping costs (excl. VAT/sales tax)
- Order - shipping costs (incl. VAT/sales tax)
- Order - shipping costs VAT/sales tax
- Order - status
- Order - VAT number
- Return - comment
- Return - ID
- Return - origin
- Return - reason
- Return - return number
- Shipping - shipped from (country)
- Shipping address - city
- Shipping address - company name
- Shipping address - country code
- Shipping address - first name
- Shipping address - last name
- Shipping address - gender
- Shipping address - house number
- Shipping address - house number addition
- Shipping address - original
- Shipping address - region
- Shipping address - street name
- Shipping address - zip code
Order details
When you open an order, by either clicking the 'eye' icon or the order number, you see all relevant information organized in four distinct sections.
Order details
The overall details of each order, including the related identifiers, dates, status, and payment method.
Note that different marketplaces, and even different orders from the same marketplace, may include different information. Additionally, some marketplaces export data such as the VAT/sales tax calculation method – which is shown under the Extra information subsection.
Personal details
The buyer's details, such as their contact information and address(es). It is possible to add a comment to these details under the Comment subsection.
From here, you can download an invoice and a packing slip for this order. To change the order status manually, open the Actions (⋮) menu. You can acknowledge new orders, reset in-progress orders to New, and close orders. However, note that manual status changes are not recommended and should only be used as an exception.
Products
The actual products ordered, including their GTIN, the quantity ordered, and the total price.
By default, VAT/sales tax is not shown unless the Show VAT and commission option is enabled. Note that most marketplaces do not include VAT/sales tax in their order, and the calculation is done by using either your default VAT/sales tax percentage or country-specific percentages based on your VAT/sales tax settings.
The same goes for the commission charged by the marketplace, if available. ChannelEngine makes the subtotal, order, and total order commission fees available to you.
If you make use of the stock locations feature, you can enable the Show stock locations option to reveal the warehouse associated with a specific order.
Shipments
If the order has already been shipped, this section is populated accordingly. You can then switch between a view that organizes the shipping information along a timeline or across tabs.
Order status
The status of an order corresponds to how far it currently is in the process. Most orders have an In progress or Shipped status, the other statuses are less common and depend on which order handling methods are supported by the channel.
Note that the order status describes the general status of its order, and does not necessarily reflect the status of a subsequent part of it. Once a shipment is added to an order, the status of the order is Shipped. However, this does not guarantee that the shipment has already been exported to the channel.
The same goes for cancelations. The order status might change to Canceled or Closed, but the cancelation itself might still be on In progress/Not exported yet.
Order statuses
| Label (web app) | Status | API status | Description |
| New | NEW | It has not been picked up by the webstore/order management system yet. | |
| In progress | IN_PROGRESS | It has been acknowledged by the webstore/order management system, and has a merchant order number*. It remains in progress even if partially shipped or canceled, with one or more items still to be shipped. | |
| Shipped | SHIPPED | It has been shipped. | |
| In backorder | IN_BACKORDER | It is in backorder. | |
| Canceled | MANCO | It is canceled, either by the merchant or by the customer/ marketplace. | |
| Combined | IN_COMBI | It is partially shipped form the web app, with one or more items still to be shipped – this usually happens with partial merchant-fulfilled orders. | |
| Closed | CLOSED | It is partially shipped and partially canceled or returned. | |
| Returned | RETURNED | It has been completely returned by the customer. | |
| Requires correction | REQUIRES_CORRECTION | It has address lines that cannot be parsed automatically, and needs to be corrected manually. | |
| Awaiting payment | AWAITING_PAYMENT | The related stock has been reserved, but payment for the order has not been confirmed yet. |
Requires correction status
If an order has the status Requires correction, you can update it to New in two ways. You can either open the address information by clicking the pencil icon and save it without changing it, or you can open the address information and update it accordingly. In both scenarios, ChannelEngine changes the status to New so that you can continue processing the order.
For more information about our address parser, see the article ChannelEngine: address parsing.
Orders and stock
Once ChannelEngine receives an order for a specific product, the stock for that product is reserved. E.g.: if you have a stock of 17 vases and two of these are sold, ChannelEngine exports a stock of 15 to all connected marketplaces. As long as the status is New or In progress, this reservation remains – until the status changes to Shipped or Canceled. At that point, the stock from your product feed or other stock connection becomes leading again.
Order support
On ChannelEngine, order support determines to which degree orders can be split up for shipments, returns, and cancelations. The degree of order support varies across different marketplaces, and is categorized as follows:
-
- 0 (none) - the marketplace does not support any orders or order follow-up actions. E.g.: Beslist does not support automated shipments or returns, therefore it is not possible to perform any partial order actions.
- 1 (no split/orders) - the marketplace supports orders and follow-up actions, but these cannot be split up. All order lines within a single order must be included in one shipment.
- 2 (split orders) - the marketplace supports orders and follow-up actions, and they can be split into individual order lines. However, each order line itself cannot be split further. E.g.: an order with two separate products can be shipped in two separate shipments. But if a quantity of three of the same product is ordered, only a total of three can be shipped, canceled, or returned.
- 3 (split order lines) - the marketplace supports orders and follow-up actions, and each order line within an order can be split. E.g.: if a quantity of three of the same product is ordered, you can ship two and cancel one.
Automated order handling
If a webstore is fully integrated via ChannelEngine's API, one of the webstore plugins, or an enterprise resource planning (ERP) integration, the order handling should be fully automated. The back-end of your webstore is where the entire order process is handled.
When an order is placed on a marketplace, ChannelEngine imports it with order status New. When the order is exported to the webstore and an acknowledgement is received, the order status changes to In progress. From this moment on, the usual process of the webstore is followed.
When an order is shipped by the webstore, ChannelEngine is notified with the carrier and track-and-trace information. This changes the order status to Shipped, and ChannelEngine exports this shipment information to the marketplace. At this point, the customer is usually notified by the marketplace that the order is on its way.
Manual order handling
If you do not have your own webstore and only use ChannelEngine to sell on marketplaces, ChannelEngine cannot send the order anywhere and you have to process it directly on ChannelEngine. You can use a product feed to upload product information that ChannelEngine can use for marketplaces. You can also create an adjustable feed to manage your stock information, but it is possible to manage this on ChannelEngine if you have no stock attribute in that feed.
You can select the option ChannelEngine manages stock in the Advanced settings section under Settings, Settings. The stock is automatically updated after a sale, but you can manually adjust the stock of your products in your product detail page on ChannelEngine. The orders (including shipments, cancelations, and returns) have to be managed on ChannelEngine.
Order settings
To view other order settings, go to Setting, Settings.
- Randomize anonymous email value - if enabled, ChannelEngine randomly generates an email address for an order that does not include one. The generated email follows this structure: 'no-email[random GUID]@channelengine.com', where random GUID is a unique identifier. If the setting is disabled, ChannelEngine uses 'no-email@channelengine.com' for every order with no email.
- Late unshipped days - the number of days after which the order is considered as late unshipped. ChannelEngine adds the specified number of days to the order date to calculate the late unshipped date. You can override this value by using the Late unshipped days setting for a specific channel, on its Setup page. To learn more about the late unshipped feature, check out the ChannelEngine: late unshipped orders article.
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