Magento duplicates this sales process in pretty much the same way. For our purposes, though, we need to understand what happens after the customer commits to the order, for that is when the store administrator's participation is required.

The following chart illustrates both the frontend and backend steps of the Magento sales process:

The black boxes with white type are steps that generally create an e-mail to the customer.

As we'll see in this chapter, there are occasional variations to this process, but in general, the Magento sales process is pretty straightforward. What you'll find impressive is the scope of Magento's ability to give you a wider latitude on adjusting the sales process to meet your particular needs. For instance, if you're selling downloadable products, such as e-books, music or software, you don't need the shipping process steps. Yet, if you sell proprietary digital media, you will need to manage the distribution of the products to your customers. For instance, to prevent unlimited downloads.

Before mapping out the business rules that you will use to configure Magento, it's helpful to see and understand how orders are processed in the Magento backend. Many times, developers and administrators new to Magento rush to configure the myriad of settings (which we will be covering in this chapter) without fully realizing how those choices might impact on the overall sales process. It's understandable because most will want to test the ordering system with all the settings in place. It's a bit of a catch-22: you have no orders to use to understand the configurations, yet without the configurations, you can't test the ordering process.

Fortunately, a basic Magento 2 install with the sample data (again with the sample data? Yes!) gives you the basic configurations to allow you to place some sample orders and review the order process.

Logging into the Magento backend, we can see our latest orders listed in the left sidebar of the dashboard:

From here we can click on the order we wish to process, or we can go to Sales | Orders in the top navigation bar and then select the order from the list of all orders. Either way, we end up with a detailed view of the order.

Let's take each section of this screen separately and explain what each contributes to the ordering process.

The first section, shown in the preceding image on the left, summarizes key order information, including the timestamp of the order (date and time), the current status (which by default is pending), and from which Magento store the purchase was made.

New orders, by default, are marked as pending. This means the order is awaiting your attention. The customer has already been charged and has received an e-mail confirmation of their order, but it's now up to you to complete the order, eventually taking it to a stage of complete.

The box on the right tells us the name of the customer, their e-mail address, and the fact that they checked out without registering (more on customer groups later in this chapter).

The next row of boxes shows the billing and shipping addresses for the purchaser. Notice that these are editable. Sometimes a customer, upon receiving their e-mail receipt, will see that they made an error in either or both of these. If the customer contacts you with corrected information, you can easily make the changes here.

The third row of boxes give you information about the payment method and the buyer's choice of shipping for the order.

On row four, you'll find the list of products ordered by the customer, the amount charged and the amount of sales tax applicable for each line item.

The final row of boxes are quite interesting and important. First, on the left in the preceding image, is how you can keep notes on an order and update the customer. Let's say, as in this case, that you have discovered that you only have one remaining chair and that more chairs won't arrive for another two weeks. By filling in this information here, and checking the Notify Customer by Email box, you can update the customer ("Would you like us to hold your order, or cancel it?") and have the update sent automatically to the buyer. Furthermore, by checking the Visible on Storefront box, the customer – if they are registered – can view the update in the Account Information section of your store.

All comments entered will be appended to the list at the bottom of the box.

The box to the right is the transaction summary of the order.

Convert orders to invoices

The next step for you, as the person who is processing orders, is to invoice this order. In Magento, this means that you are confirming the order, and proceeding with processing.

Note

You can go straight to shipping for an order without having to generate an invoice. However, it is good practice to go from Order to Invoice to Shipping. In this manner, you are tracking not only the products, but the payments, as well.

To convert an order into an invoice, click the button at the top of the page labeled Invoice. The resulting page is similar to the order page, except that it allows you to perform certain additional functions:

• Create Shipment: In the box titled Shipping Information, you can check the box labeled Create Shipment and add any tracking numbers to the invoice.
• Change the Quantity of Products to Invoice: As in our first example, if you have less products in stock than actually on hand, you may want to alter the number of products you are invoicing. Any remaining products will cause the order to remain open for future invoicing.
• Add Comments: As on the Order page, you can add a comment to the invoice and select whether the comment should be appended to the Invoice. Otherwise, the comment will be added to the order history.

Once you have made any of the preceding changes, you can click on Submit Invoice, which will convert the order to an invoice, and record the order as an actual sale. This is key, as your analysis of sales for your store rely on the analysis of invoices, not orders. If you have not shipped the items yet, the status of the order is now shown as Processing.

Note

Orders are not Sales. Invoices are Sales.

Now that we have converted an order into an invoice, the box on the Dashboard screen, titled Lifetime Sales, is now updated showing the total sales for the chosen period, less shipping and sales taxes, as shown in the following screenshot.

Creating shipments

Now that we have created our invoice, and once we have shipped the purchased products, we can create one or more shipments. To do this, open the order as before and click the Ship button near the top of the screen.

On this screen, you can add tracking numbers for your shipments, as well as indicate the quantity of each product shipped. In the following image, I have added a sample UPS tracking number. You can add as many as required (you may need to ship an order in more than one box, for instance).

Lower on the page, you will find each line item of the order, with a field allowing you to change the number of products shipped, as shown in the following screenshot:

Once you have made any changes, including adding any comments, you can click Submit Shipment. If you ship all ordered items, the status of the order will change to Complete; otherwise, the order will remain Processing.

Once you become familiar with the sales process, you'll have a much better understanding of how various system configurations affect how orders are moved through Magento.