Introduction to Orders

Let's now track your product sales! An order is a group of products you sell to a customer on a specific date. Once an order has been added for a product or variation, your available stock on hand is decreased automatically by the order quantity. Orders can be manually entered or imported via your connected integrations (or a combination of both if you wish).

We'll cover

• What are Orders?
• Adding Manual Orders
• Order Line Items
• Generating Invoices
• Customizing your Invoices

This tutorial should take approximately 20 minutes to complete.

What are Orders?

An order is a group of products you sell to a customer on a specific date. You can add as many products as you like to each order. Once an order has been added for a product or variation, the available stock on hand is decreased automatically by the order quantity. Orders can be manually entered or imported via your connected Integrations.

Craftybase offers the ability to connect and download your orders from several integrations. If you exclusively use these integrations, you will not need to enter any order information manually. If you don't have shops on our available integrations or also have orders from other platforms that need to be recorded, then move to the next step in the tutorial, where we will show you how to create a manual order.

Adding Manual Orders

For this tutorial, we will also be assuming that our product already exists in Craftybase as a product.

To get to your order form for a particular product, the fastest way is to select the Add Order option in the Quick Add menu bar. Alternatively, click on the Orders tab, then click the  + Add Order button on the order list page.

Now that we are on the order form, let's take a closer look:

In the first field, Order Code, if you don't add a code here, Craftybase will add a unique incremental number to represent the order.

Customer Details

The following field, Customer, is for adding information about the customer who purchased the product. For a repeat purchaser, select their name from your list or alternatively click the link to the right of the search box to add a new customer.

Delivery Address Where the order is to be shipped. If the sale was made to an anonymous buyer or delivered in person, then leave this blank.

Location If this order was placed from one of your locations, specify it here to ensure that stock is deducted directly from this location.

Order Date This is the date you first received the order from the customer. You can either type a date here or select from the calendar view.

Manufactured Date This is the date the last item in your order was manufactured. If you don't wish to track manufacture dates for orders, this field can be switched off in your account settings at any time.

Shipped Date This is the date the last item in your order was sent to your customer. The Shipping Date is an important field as it marks when the manufacturing costs for this order are officially removed from your inventory. You'll want to ensure that all orders are marked with the exact date on which the product was shipped to the customer. If you are linking your manufactures to each order item, you will notice that this date will be automatically set for you via the manufacture information.

Due Date If you don't require due dates, you can turn this field off completely via your account settings pages.

Order Line Items

Next is your Order Line Items section.

If you have started via the Order list or Quick Add menu, you'll see an empty list here. Click the "Add Order Item" to add your first product line to the order. You'll see a line appear with fields ready to edit: search for one of your products in the Search products box and then select it from the results.

Now that we have a product selected, let's take a look at this section in detail:

The first column shows the Image that represents this product. This image will be displayed on your invoice view. The second column contains information about the Product and Variation to which this order line item is linked. For this example, to keep it simple, you'll notice that we don't have a variation selected as the second line is empty. The third line in this section is your Additional Notes, which can be used to add any additional information about the line item. These notes will also be displayed on your invoice view.

In the third column, your Unit Price will be automatically populated from the Base Sale Price set for the product you have selected. You can, at this stage, modify this to your actual sale amount here if it is different from your default sale price. You'll notice that when you change your unit price, your total price for the order line item will be automatically calculated and updated for you.

Your Quantity column is for the quantity of the product you have sold in this order.

Keep in mind if you have set your Sale Quantity for this product to be more than one, this quantity will be multiplied by your sales quantity in order to determine the actual quantity and decrease your product stock levels.

Kate has set her Sales Quantity to 2 for her "Emerald Earrings" product as she always sells two together for each sale. When she adds a new order for this product, she will set an order quantity of 1. Craftybase will multiply the Sale Quantity by the Order Quantity to arrive at the actual number sold (1 x 2 = 2). Therefore, 2 "Emerald Earrings" will be removed from her stock when the order is placed.

The next column is your Total Price, which shows the total amount payable for this item. This is automatically calculated based on the unit price and quantity entered. Finally, the last column contains a button to remove the line item.

Under the order line item list is an Add Order Item button that allows you to add a new row to the list - in this way, you can add as many items as you need to your order.

The next section is your Order Totals area, where you can add amounts that are applied to the entire order. We'll take a closer look at each of the rows located here:

The Shipping amount here should always be the amount charged to the customer, not the amount you paid to send the order.

Your default tax rate will be pre-populated into the form when it is loaded; however, you can change this per order if needed.

The last row shows your Order Total, which is calculated using the following formula: Item Total - Discount + Tax + Shipping.

The Paid checkbox allows you to mark the order as fully paid for by the customer. This has no impact on any of your inventory or reporting calculations and is for your records only.

In order to provide more segmentation and grouping to your order list. You will find this option in the Additional Details (OPTIONAL). You can create custom categories and attach a category to your order using your Category field. Either select from your list of existing order categories or add a new one using the textbox on the right-hand side of the selector.

The last two fields of your order form are for free text messages. The first field, Customer Message,  will appear on your invoice view, so this is ideal for adding a custom message for the customer to your invoice. The Notes field is for any additional details you wish to store about this order - this field will not be presented on the invoice view, so it is for your records only.

When you are happy with the details of the order, click the Save Order button, and you'll be taken to the order details view.

If you have a number of orders to enter into Craftybase, click the Save Order & Add Another button, and the form will be cleared and ready for your next order.

Generating Invoices

On the order details page, hovering over the ⋮ menu in the top left corner will display options for the order. Clicking on the Generate Invoice option will create and download a printable invoice that you can either print or add to an email as an attachment.

Customizing your Invoices

You can upload a logo to display on your invoices and also add your complete business address via your Account Settings pages. To do this, click on your Settings icon in the top right-hand corner of the page, then click the Invoice Settings link. On the form that appears, scroll down until you find your Business Address section. This address and image will be displayed on every invoice you generate.

Have some questions?

If you have any additional questions, please get in touch, and we'll be happy to give you a hand.