Orders

Every checkout in your store creates an order. This page covers the Orders list, the order detail screen, the full status vocabulary, and exactly what happens when you move an order from one status to another.

The Orders screen

Open Ambikly → Orders. The list shows 25 orders per page, newest first.

Column	What it shows
Order	order_number, or the numeric id if no number was generated. Click it to open the order.
Customer	The order's customer_email. If the order is linked to a customer record, it links to that customer. Guest orders show "Guest".
Date	created_at.
Status	The order status pill.
Payment	The payment status pill — a separate field from the order status.
Total	total in the order's own currency.
Actions	View and Edit.

Order, Date, Status and Total are sortable. Sorting is server-side and only these columns are accepted: id, order_number, status, total, created_at, updated_at. Anything else falls back to created_at.

Search

The search box matches order_number or customer_email with a LIKE comparison. It does not search customer names, product names, SKUs or addresses.

Filters

Two independent dropdowns sit above the table:

• Order status — one of the seven statuses below, or "All orders".
• Payment status — one of the seven payment statuses below, or "Any payment status".

They combine. "Processing" plus "Invoiced (net terms)" isolates B2B orders you have shipped but not yet been paid for.

Tip: The order list and the detail screen both read their status vocabulary from GET /ambikly/v1/orders/statuses, so labels stay in sync with whatever the store's language pack translates them to.

Order statuses

Seven statuses exist. These slugs are what the database stores and what the REST API accepts.

Slug	Label	Meaning
pending	Pending	Order created, payment not settled. Every order starts here.
processing	Processing	Payment received (or an offline method was settled). Ready to fulfill.
on-hold	On Hold	Parked for a manual check — a suspected fraud review, a stock problem, a customer query.
completed	Completed	Fulfilled and closed. Sets completed_at and forces fulfillment_status to fulfilled.
cancelled	Cancelled	Called off before fulfillment. Sets cancelled_at.
refunded	Refunded	Set automatically when the refunded total reaches the order total. See Refunds & cancellations.
failed	Failed	Payment did not go through.

Note the spelling: the on-hold slug is on-hold with a hyphen, and cancelled is cancelled with two Ls.

Payment statuses

Payment status is tracked separately from order status, on the same row.

Slug	Label	Meaning
pending	Pending	No payment settled yet.
paid	Paid	Payment confirmed. total_paid is set to the order total.
partially-paid	Partially Paid	Part of the balance is settled. Nothing in the free core sets this automatically.
refunded	Refunded	The full order total has been refunded.
partially-refunded	Partially Refunded	Some, but not all, of the total has been refunded.
failed	Failed	The gateway declined or errored.
invoiced	Invoiced (net terms)	A B2B order billed to a company account, awaiting invoice payment by its due date. See B2B companies & Net Terms.

The order detail screen

Click an order number, or use the eye icon. The screen is one header bar plus a two-column body.

Header

The header carries the order number, the placed-at timestamp, and the controls:

• Status dropdown — changing it is the only supported way to move an order between statuses. See Changing status.
• Record Payment — appears only when payment_method is net_terms and payment_status is invoiced. This is not a refund and not a status change; it settles a net-terms invoice and releases company credit.
• Refund — disabled once total_refunded equals total.
• Print invoice — opens the token-guarded invoice URL in a new tab.
• Print packing slip — appears only when packing slips are enabled under Ambikly → Settings → Invoice & Packing. When the toggle is off the button is hidden, because the endpoint would return a 404 page.

Line items

A table of every row in ambikly_order_items: name, SKU, type (Digital or Physical, read from the item's own is_downloadable flag), quantity, unit price and line total.

Below the items, the totals block shows Subtotal, Discount (with the coupon codes that produced it, when any), Shipping, Tax, Total, and a Refunded line when total_refunded is above zero. Zero-value rows are hidden.

Digital downloads

Present only when the order granted downloads. One row per granted file with its download count, any limit, its expiry and a working link. See Digital downloads.

Order notes

The full audit trail, newest first, with an inline box for adding your own. Covered in Order notes below.

Customer

Name (taken from the billing address, falling back to the email), email and phone. If the order has a customer_id, the name links to the customer record.

Payment

The payment method title, a payment-status pill, and — for a B2B order — a link to the billing company, the payment terms, and the invoice due date.

Addresses

Billing and shipping cards, each rendered only when that address row exists. A digital-only order has no shipping address at all.

Documents

Invoices and packing slips are reached from the header icons, not from a panel in the body. Both are covered in Invoices & packing slips.

Changing status

1. Open the order from Ambikly → Orders.
2. Pick the new status from the dropdown in the header.
3. Confirm in the dialog. Cancelled, Refunded and Failed get an extra warning because each has consequences beyond the label.

A status change always writes a system note recording the transition, then fires ambikly_order_status_changed with the order, the old status and the new status.

What a status change triggers

Transition	What happens
Anything → completed	completed_at is stamped, fulfillment_status becomes fulfilled.
Anything → cancelled	cancelled_at is stamped.
pending, processing, on-hold or completed → cancelled or failed	Stock is restored for every non-digital line item, once per order. An unpaid net-terms order also releases its reserved company credit.
Anything → processing or completed, on an offline gateway	The order is marked paid automatically.
Any change	The order status change email is sent to the customer and to the admin recipients, if those are enabled.

Stock restoration

Restoration runs once per order and is recorded in the order's own meta, so cycling an order Processing → Cancelled → Processing → Cancelled cannot inflate your inventory. Digital line items are skipped. A system note records that stock was restored.

Offline payment settlement

Cash on Delivery, Direct Bank Transfer and Check Payments all leave an order at payment_status: pending through checkout, because no money has actually moved yet. Moving such an order to Processing or Completed marks it paid: total_paid is set, a "Payment received" note is written, and ambikly_order_paid fires — which is what issues download grants and license keys.

Net terms and the Manual gateway are deliberately excluded from this. A net-terms invoice settles only through Record Payment, and a Manual-gateway order is already paid at the moment it is created.

Digital-only auto-completion

When an order is marked paid and every line item is downloadable (or is not a physical item that requires shipping), the order is moved to Completed automatically, with the note "Digital-only order auto-completed." Mixed carts stay in Processing so you still ship the physical part.

Careful: Setting the status to Refunded from the dropdown only relabels the order. It does not move money and does not create a refund record. To actually return funds, use the Refund button — see Refunds & cancellations.

Order notes

Every order carries a note trail stored in ambikly_order_notes. Notes are never editable or deletable from the admin.

Field	What it holds
content	The note body. Filtered through wp_kses_post, so basic HTML survives.
type	system for notes the plugin writes, manual for notes typed into the box.
author	The display name of the logged-in user who caused the note, or system when there is no user in context.
author_id	The WordPress user id, when there is one.
is_customer_visible	Whether the note is flagged customer-visible.

System notes

The plugin writes a note for each of these, without you doing anything:

• Order placed, naming the channel it came through (checkout, admin, or whatever created_via was set to).
• Status changed from one status to another.
• Payment received, with the gateway transaction id when one is available.
• Download grants issued, and license keys issued.
• Stock restored.
• Refund issued, with the amount and reason.
• License keys revoked on a full refund.

A note written during checkout, by a payment webhook, or by cron has no logged-in user, so its author is system. A note caused by an action you took in the admin — a status change, a refund — records your display name even though it is a system note.

Manual notes

Type into the box at the bottom of the Order notes panel and click Add note. The Customer visible checkbox flags the note as customer-facing; leave it off for internal notes.

Tip: Customer-visible notes are a flag on the note row. The free core stores and displays the flag in the admin; nothing in the free core emails a note to the customer on its own.

Creating an order manually

The admin can create an order from scratch. Click Create Order on Ambikly → Orders.

1. Search for products by name or SKU and click one to add it as a line. Adding the same product twice increments its quantity instead of adding a second row.
2. Adjust the unit price and quantity on any line, or remove the line.
3. Search for an existing customer to prefill their name, email and phone, or type a new email. The billing email is required.
4. Fill in the billing address. A shipping address block appears only when at least one line item requires shipping; tick Same as billing to copy it.
5. Pick a payment method from your enabled gateways.
6. Click Save order.

What the manual order screen does and does not do:

• Totals are the sum of the line items. Shipping, tax and discount are all sent as 0 — the screen does not run the shipping, tax or coupon engines.
• Stock is decremented, exactly as it is for a real checkout.
• Choosing Manual Payment marks the order paid immediately, which issues downloads and licenses and fires ambikly_order_paid. The Manual gateway is only ever offered to a logged-in user with store-manage capability, never at public checkout.
• Choosing Cash on Delivery, Bank Transfer or Check leaves the order pending until you move it to Processing or Completed.
• Stripe and PayPal are not usable here — nothing on this screen charges a card.

Editing an existing order

Use the pencil icon on the Orders list, or the Edit action. The edit screen deliberately allows far less than the create screen.

Editable: fulfillment_status, customer email and phone, the customer note, the shipping method and its title, the payment method and its title, and the billing and shipping addresses.

Not editable: line items, quantities and prices. Changing them after the fact would leave stock, payment and totals out of sync with what the customer actually paid. The screen says so and renders those fields read-only. To fix a mistake, cancel the order and create a new one, or add a note explaining the correction.

Not settable here at all: status and payment_status. A plain update that flipped those would skip every side effect — no stock movement, no license issuance, no note, no hooks. Status goes through the status dropdown; payment goes through Refund or Record Payment.

Deleting an order

The Delete action removes the order permanently. Before the row goes, the plugin restores its stock (idempotently, so an already-cancelled order is unaffected) and releases any reserved net-terms credit on an unpaid B2B order. It then cascades the delete to order items, addresses, notes, transactions and any license keys minted from that order.

Careful: Deletion is not reversible and the order disappears from your reports. Cancel an order you want to keep a record of.

Timestamps and timezone

completed_at and cancelled_at are written in the site's own timezone, as configured under WordPress's Settings → General. created_at falls through to the database column's own default, which is stamped in whatever timezone the MySQL server runs in. If your database server and your site disagree on timezone, an order placed near midnight can land on the neighbouring day in the sales-by-day chart. See Reports.

Where to go next

• Refunds & cancellations — returning money and what it does to stock and credit.
• Invoices & packing slips — printing order documents.
• Emails — the notifications a status change sends.
• B2B companies & Net Terms — invoiced orders and credit lines.