Paid

Remember Payment status is independent of everything else. A customer may have paid an order with it being invoiced, committed or dispatched.

An order's paid status is affected by the payments that are recorded on it. Payments are generally either recorded automatically (e.g., credit card payment, PayPal), or entered manually by an administrator. An order can have any number of payments of different amounts and via different payment methods - helping to capture the reality of a multi-modal business where payment is not always made immediately on placing of the order.

Entering Manual Payments

This can be done either from the order drilldown screen, or for multiple orders at once from the list view.

Order Balance and Customer Balance

It's useful to be clear on how payments recorded on an order affect different balances in the system.

Outstanding balance is shown on the order and refers only to the amount outstanding to be paid on that order. In the case of overpayment, this number will be negative, and indicates that the customer has paid more than the invoiced order amount.

Mind Boggler Remember that technically the amount due on an order is the invoiced amount, not just the order total. This might seem a bit odd at first, but if an order is not invoiced, then it cannot impact balances (both order and customer balance). Therefore, if payment has been made against an uninvoiced order (which can and does happen), then the oustanding balance for both the order and the customer will be negative.

Customer balance is the customer's overall balance. In a typical B2C e-commerce business, that number will normally be zero as payment is taken straight away. In a B2B business that offers credit terms to customers, this number will usually positive, indicating that the customer owes you money.

Of course, payments on an order impact both that order's outstanding balance and the customer's overall outstanding balance.

Order Payment Status

So order payment status simply relates to how much of an order's invoiced amount has been paid. Like the other status axes, it can be fully, partially or none.