How to look up orders and check your fulfilment backlog

The Recent orders card at the foot of Selling › Analytics is where you look up a specific order. The Waiting to ship tile at the top of the same page is your backlog. Both are part of What is Store analytics?, and How to read the Analytics page covers the rest of the page.

Before you start

Recent orders needs the View orders row in Settings › Permissions, on top of the permission that opens Analytics. An admin sets both, covered in How to set who can do what.

If Analytics opens but the orders card says it could not load your recent orders, and Refresh does not fix it, ask an admin to check View orders for your role.

How do you read the orders table?

Each row shows the Order number, the Customer, the Total, two status pills under Status, and the Date. The newest order is at the top.

The first pill is the shipping state and the second is the payment state. Both print Shopify's own status in capitals, such as UNFULFILLED, PARTIALLY_FULFILLED, ON_HOLD, PAID or PARTIALLY_REFUNDED.

Green means done and amber means waiting. Blue marks something part-way, such as PARTIALLY_FULFILLED or PARTIALLY_PAID, and rose marks ON_HOLD or REFUNDED.

The card shows ten orders a page. Move between pages with the numbered buttons, or with the arrows on a phone.

How do you see an order's full detail?

Rest your mouse on the row, or move to it with the keyboard. On a touch screen, tap the row.

A detail card opens beside it with:

• the order number, the customer's name and their email
• every line with its quantity and line total
• Subtotal, Shipping, Tax and Total
• the Ship to address
• the order's Note, and any comments left on the order in Shopify, each marked Shopify staff or An app with its date

The notes are the reason to know this card. "Customer asked us to hold until Friday" lives in Shopify, and no status pill will tell you. If the card cannot load, rest on the row again.

How do you check the backlog?

Waiting to ship on the top row of Analytics counts paid orders that are unfulfilled or only partly fulfilled. It ignores the date picker, because a backlog is about today. See How to change the date range.

The count is as fresh as the Updated stamp in the header, such as Updated 4m ago. Press Refresh for the count as of now.

To be told when the backlog grows, an admin can switch on the Shipping backlog alert. It alerts at the number set in At this many paid orders waiting to ship, which starts at 10. See How to set up the stock and order alerts.

How do you ask what is stuck?

Open the What is the Agent? with the sparkle on the right edge of the page, press + beside its box, choose Saved prompts and pick Stuck orders under Digests. Tideswell fills in the question for you to send.

It asks what is sitting in the backlog, how old the oldest order is, and whether anything is waiting on stock. That last part is the one a status pill cannot answer.

On the iPhone app, Stuck orders is a button on Home. See How to reuse a question: starters, skills, digests and saved prompts.

How do you turn a problem order into a conversation?

Press the speech-bubble button at the end of the order's row (Discuss in chat). Name the thread, pick a channel, and press Start thread.

The thread name starts as the order number, such as "Order #1042", and you can change it. The list holds every channel you can see, so pick one you post in.

You land in the new thread. Its first message carries the order as a chip, with the customer, total and both statuses beside it, so everyone in the thread can open the order. See How to reply and start a thread.

How do you get from an order to the customer?

Click the customer's name on the row. Their panel opens beside Analytics, with their lifetime value, how often they order, Recent orders (last 60 days) and their Shopify notes.

The name is a link when the order's email matches a customer in Customers › Customers. It is the same panel the customer list opens, covered in How to find a customer and read their history.

How do you find an older order?

Look it up in Shopify. The Recent orders card shows your 100 most recent orders, ten to a page, so it is the place for what has just come in.