---
title: How to look up orders and check your fulfilment backlog
url: https://tideswell.xyz/docs/store/orders-and-fulfilment
description: Read recent orders, open one for its full detail, and turn a problem order into a chat thread.
---

> Documentation index: fetch https://tideswell.xyz/llms.txt to discover every page before exploring further.

# How to look up orders and check your fulfilment backlog



The **Recent orders** card at the foot of **Store › Analytics** is where a specific order gets
looked up, and the **Waiting to ship** figure above it is the backlog. Together they cover
"what is going out and what is stuck". See <Ref to="store/read-your-dashboard" /> for the
rest of the page.

## Before you start [#before-you-start]

Opening an order's detail needs the **view orders** permission, which is its own dial rather
than part of general store access.

That means you can be able to read the dashboard and still be refused an order's details. The
card says so explicitly rather than showing you a blank, and
<Ref to="concepts/who-can-do-what" /> explains how to ask for the right one.

## How do you read the orders table? [#how-do-you-read-the-orders-table]

Each row carries the order number, the customer, the total, a fulfilment status pill, a
payment status pill and the date.

**Fulfilment status** is Shopify's shipping state: unfulfilled, partially fulfilled or
fulfilled. **Financial status** is the payment state: paid, pending, refunded and so on.

Page through ten at a time with the numbered pages, or the arrows on a phone.

## How do you see an order's full detail? [#how-do-you-see-an-orders-full-detail]

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

A detail card opens with the customer's email, every line item with quantity and line total,
the subtotal, shipping, tax and total, the shipping address, and any order note or staff
comment your team left in Shopify.

Those staff notes are the reason this card is worth knowing about. "Customer asked us to hold
until Friday" lives in Shopify and is invisible from a status pill.

The card loads when you rest on the row rather than in advance, and it is remembered for a
few minutes afterwards. If a load fails it asks you to hover again rather than showing part
of an order.

## How do you check the backlog? [#how-do-you-check-the-backlog]

**Waiting to ship** on the top row of the dashboard counts paid orders that are unfulfilled
or partly fulfilled, as of right now.

It deliberately ignores the date picker, because a backlog is a present-tense fact. See
<Ref to="store/change-the-date-range" />.

For what is behind the number, the analyst's **Stuck orders** button asks what is sitting in
the backlog, how old the oldest is, and whether anything is blocked on stock. That last part
is the question a status pill cannot answer. See <Ref to="analyst/digest-buttons" />.

## How do you turn a problem order into a conversation? [#how-do-you-turn-a-problem-order-into-a-conversation]

Click the speech-bubble button on the order's row. Name the thread, choose the channel, and
you land in a new chat thread with the order attached as a chip.

This is how a fulfilment problem becomes something the team can pick up rather than something
one person is looking at. Everyone in the thread can open the order from the chip.

The channels offered are the ones you can post in, and starting a thread needs the same view
orders permission as reading the detail.

## How do you get from an order to the customer? [#how-do-you-get-from-an-order-to-the-customer]

Click the customer's name on the row. Their panel opens beside the dashboard with their
history, their value and their recent orders.

That is the same panel the customer directory uses, covered in
<Ref to="customers/find-a-customer" />.

## Why can I not jump to an old order? [#why-can-i-not-jump-to-an-old-order]

Because the orders card holds a batch of the most recent orders and pages through them in
your browser, rather than paging your whole order history.

When you are after a specific old order, search for it in Shopify, or ask the analyst about
the period it fell in. This card is built for "what has just come in", which is what it is
next to on the page.
