Every sale is recorded here. An order's status is not just a label — changing it does real work.
Stock moves at settlement, not at checkout
An order that has been placed but not paid for has taken nothing off the shelf. Reducing stock, issuing download grants and activating memberships all happen at the moment of settlement: a successful gateway payment, a manual completion, or a confirmed direct payment.
Each effect happens exactly once
Marking a gateway-paid order as "completed" by hand does not reduce stock a second time. The previous status is checked, and work that has already been done is not repeated.
Re-saving the same status likewise changes nothing — and sends no second SMS.
Cancelling only returns what was actually taken
On cancelled or refunded, stock is returned only when it was genuinely drawn down — that is, when the order had been paid or completed.
Cancelling an order that was never paid does not wrongly inflate stock.
"Shipped" only means something after settlement
Marking an order shipped commits the stock Inventory had reserved for it. That happens only for an order that had already settled; marking an unpaid order as shipped takes nothing out of the warehouse.
Direct payment waits for you
An order placed by bank transfer sits at pending and has had no effect at all: no stock, no access. Until you have seen the receipt or tracking code and confirmed the payment, it does not count as settled.
Order numbers are never reused
Numbers are generated in sequence from the pattern set in Settings. A number that has been used is never issued again — not even when that order is cancelled or fails — so gaps in the sequence are normal.
Two note boxes that are not the same thing
Order notes are staff-only and the customer never sees them. Note to Customer is separate: it appears on their order and notifies them, and each one you send is a new message rather than an edit of the last.
If the order is not attached to a customer account — a guest purchase, say — the note is still recorded but no notification goes out, and the confirmation message says so.