What does order management in WooCommerce mean?

That a plugin that handles payments in WooCommerce also includes order management may at first glance feel quite obvious. It is obvious that it should be possible to manage orders in my web shop. Right? The key here is what we mean by order management.

In the plugins developed by us at Krokedil, order management means that WooCommerce is linked to your payment service provider. When you change the status of an order in your WooCommerce store, this is also updated in the system of the payment service provider.

Before we go any further, we should also mention that plugins that handle shipping can also have order management. In those cases, however, it is a matter of handling the booking of the shipment. So it is not the same as order management in the plugin for payments.

What does order management mean?

In summary, this means that you manage all steps of your order management in WooCommerce.

You can thus activate or cancel an order in WooCommerce. You do not need to log in at the admin of your payment service and do the same job again. This also applies to orders that, in whole or in part, are to be refunded.

There are plugins that do not have refunds as part of the order management. This is relevant in cases where the payment service provider does not support refunds.

What is meant by activating an order?

This may have slightly different names from different vendors. But simply put, it is when you say that an order is ready to be delivered. Usually in connection with you changing it to Completed in WooCommerce. Then a signal is sent to the payment service provider that you as a merchant have done what you are supposed to. That the invoice can be sent or the reserved amount on the card can be deducted for instance.

Get started with order management

Most of our payment plugins have order management as standard. Which means that it is installed in connection with you installing the payment plugin. Then you choose whether you want to activate order management or not via the payment plugin’s settings.

For some, an extra plugin is needed that is only for order handling. The reason why there are slightly different arrangements between different suppliers depends entirely on their wishes and data management. Some see it as such a great advantage and obvious part of e-commerce that they want it as standard. Others see it as an equally obvious choice to give the user the opportunity to choose whether they want order management or not.

These additional plugins sometimes have their own page for settings. You can view it as the same as activating a setting in the payment plugin, but that the logic is handled separately. Others can instead add additional settings to the payment plugin in connection with the plugin for order management being activated. The logic is still handled separately, but you control the settings from the same place.

Order management as standard or add-on

The plugins we at Krokedil have developed that have order management as standard are Nets Easy, Walley Checkout, Ecster Pay, Payson Checkout, Qliro One, Payer and Payer B2B, Avarda Checkout, Briqpay and Zimpler.

The suppliers we have developed a plugin for that have an additional plugin for order management are Klarna and Billmate. When it comes to Klarna Checkout and Klarna Payments, it is Klarna Order Management that needs to be installed. For Billmate Checkout, Billmate Order Management handles order management.