Order Fulfillment 101
Creating a great process to manage and fulfill your orders on the back end is just as important to your eCommerce experience as what your site looks like online. Luckily, Squarespace makes it super streamlined and simple to fulfill orders and manage customers. Once you receive an order and have it ready to ship, here’s how the order fulfillment process works.
The Workflow
Get Notified - All store managers or site admins will receive an email notification every time you receive an order. If you use the Squarespace app you can also get push notifications about new orders. If you want to send the emails to other people on your team that aren’t users on your site you can either set up a rule in your Gmail to forward copies of the emails or use a tool like Zapier to set up more advanced options.
View Order Details - From the back end of Squarespace or the Commerce app, you can view an order summary, including info submitted via any custom product forms or custom checkout forms you’re using. You can also view the order status, activity, notes, and email notifications associated with the order.
Fulfill The Order - The options available to you will depend on what you’re selling. Orders for digital products or gift cards are automatically marked as fulfilled because they are delivered immediately to your customer and no further action is needed. For physical or service products, orders are held as pending and you can mark them as fulfilled as they ship or as you complete them.
Add Tracking Info - Only orders for physical products will prompt you to enter tracking information when you fulfill the order. Squarespace recognizes tracking numbers from the following carriers and will update the carrier name automatically: Australia Post, Canada Post, DHL eCommerce, DHL Express, FedEx, UPS, USPS & Royal Mail. For any other carriers, you can just enter the name under “Other.”
Send Confirmation - After you enter tracking information you’ll see a checkbox that is automatically checked to send an “order fulfilled” email confirmation to your customer. (You can uncheck this if you want to not send the email for some reason.) To edit how this email looks or customize it with any other info check out this post about how to customize your store’s email notifications. That’s it - you’re done!
Other Options
Bulk Fulfillment - If you have more than one order that you’d like to fulfill all at once you can do that by going to Home > Commerce > Orders > and filter by pending orders. You can select any/all pending orders you’d like to fulfill. You’ll then be prompted to enter tracking info if you have it.
Cancellations & Full Refunds - The most important thing to note is that you should always process refunds and cancellations directly via Squarespace and not through the payment provider. This makes sure that your stock levels remain accurate and that order info is synced correctly. You can also only cancel pending orders so if you’ve already marked the order as fulfilled you’ll need to move it back to pending before refunding or canceling. Canceling automatically refunds the purchase and sends the customer an email about the cancellation. Marking an order as canceled also gives you the option to restock your inventory with items from the order. Customers will receive the Order Cancelled email.
Partial Refunds - The most common scenario for this is if you offer your customer a refund for their purchase less the shipping costs but you can issue a refund for any amount you enter. From the order details screen just click “Issue Refund” and enter the amount. Once you confirm the refund your customer will automatically receive an email confirming so. Note that issuing a partial refund doesn’t automatically restock any inventory so if you received a return and have that product available to sell again you’ll need to add it manually to the inventory count.
Exporting Orders - If you need to pull your order info into another program or spreadsheet for reporting or other activities, you can export orders using a range of filters by going to Home > Commerce > Orders > Export.
For more on what you can do to manage your customers and orders on the back end, check out Using Squarespace as Your CRM Part 1 and Part 2.
How a Shipping Extension Changes the Fulfillment Process
Easyship Dashboard
Connecting a shipping extension is helpful for a number of reasons. A shipping extension makes it easy to print shipping labels for your orders with all the order info filled in for you - no typing addresses! :) Besides just being convenient by saving you from waiting in line for hours at the post office, most of the extensions offer discounted rates which you can take advantage of to stay competitive on shipping costs.
There’s another big benefit to using a shipping extension that really makes it a no-brainer for anyone shipping even a few products. When an order is placed on your Squarespace site, the info is automatically pushed out to your shipping extension of choice. And then, once you print & ship that order, the tracking information is automatically pushed back to Squarespace. This means that items 3-5 in the workflow above are all taken care of for you by the extension in addition to generating the shipping label and giving you a shipping discount.
For more on how shipping extensions work and how to set up a profitable shipping strategy on Squarespace check out this post.
For a full review of all the shipping extensions available on Squarespace, including my fave Easyship check out this review post.
