Orders management
Merchants or users can manage orders from each market in an organization, track and manage customer’s orders in different statuses. In this section, you will learn about order management and the order management system.
Order management system
Commerce Layer provides users with an order management system. This system allows merchants to manage orders in different statuses and one place. The order management system (also referred to as "OMS") covers the process from when a customer places an order to fulfilling that order.
Users can receive all orders from anywhere (supported markets) and fulfill them in a centralized hub. Users can also integrate any third-party system with ease to automate any workflow or task. The order management system allows users to customize their order management pipeline.
Order fulfillment
An order will initially be created in a draft status. Draft orders act as shopping carts and become pending when the customer adds some line items and their email address to the order. All pending orders will have a payment status of unpaid and fulfillment status of unfulfilled.
A customer will add one or more line items to the cart. The customer will select one of the available shipping methods. The price of applied discounts and gift cards will be subtracted from the order's total amount before checkout. Upon checkout, the customer will add their billing and shipping address. The customer will select one of the available payment method(s) supported in their purchasing market. Existing customers can choose to reuse payment source types used in previous orders or use a new payment source type.
When an order is placed (payment successful), its payment status becomes authorized. After some time, the payment will be captured, and the amount is debited from the customer's payment source type. Before payment is captured, a customer can decide to cancel their order. Cancelled orders will automatically have their payment authorization voided and payment status of cancelled. Captured orders will become approved and ready for shipment. Approved orders will have a fulfillment status of fulfilled when the order is shipped.
By default, payments are required to be captured before being able to start the order's fulfillment process. You can override this constraint by allowing a delayed capture at the payment method level. Similarly, you can decide to unify the authorization and capture steps and automatically capture payments upon authorization by enabling the auto-capture option.
A customer can request a refund at any point and for any reason once the payment status is captured. Users can decide to refund payments partially or fully upon request. The market the order is associated with determines the price list, inventory model, payment methods, and all the related business rules.