Order processing

Procedure after receiving an order

The First Order Has Arrived! What to Do..

These instructions describe how to process a new order that just arrived in your PepperShop and also show various possibilities and fulfillment procedures. It is your decision as a shop administrator what processes fit best to your company and your products. The instructions in this manual should be considered as recommendations.

If your PepperShop is connected to an ERP solution which processes the orders, this manual is usually not anymore required, because these steps are part of the ERP order handling process.

Receiving an Order

All begins when a customer places a new order in your webshop. PepperShop now sends an order confirmation email to the customer as well as to you as the shop administrator. This email contains all data relevant to be able to process this order:

• Customer invoice address
• delivery address
• order identification data and the shopping cart in the appropriate currency and language

The email to the shop operator is even more detailed, including a direct link to the order in the customer management of your PepperShop. Also regulative requirements are met. Please decide for yourself if you already want do declare an acceptance of the order, i.e. the conclusion of the contract, with the order confirmation.

Email is a technology that does not guarantee, that it will arrive at the destination. This can have various reasons (false spam detection, routing problems, SMTP problems, quota problems, …). PepperShop as the mail sending instance cannot do anything about these type of transmission problems. It is therefore a good idea to periodically check the customer management in the shop administration of your PepperShop to see whether newly received orders have arrived - e.g. once a day or at a different interval depending on the number of orders in your own shop. If you open the customer management (shop administration → customers/orders → customer management), the latest orders are displayed on top.

Order Status: “received” / Customer Management

The start page of the customer management shows you a list of orders, sorted by date. All newly received orders have the order status “received”. As soon as you intend to fulfill the order / put the ordered goods in the package ready for shipment, select the order status “in progress”. Customers see the new order status in their customer accounts (“received” changes to “in progress”).

Order Status: “in progress”

Check the payment method at this point:

• Cash payment (goods are picked up at store): Make sure that the goods are available in the respective store.
• Cash before delivery: Please “do nothing” until you are sure that the correct amount has been credited to the appropriate account. In most cases, the invoice number or the order reference number is given as identification. If a customer has not paid his order after one week, he or she should be contacted. After two to three weeks at the latest, you should delete the order and inform the customer by email so that there are no unnecessary reservations of goods and orders that have not been executed. The PepperShop module payment status¹ is used to manage payment status. With this module you can specify at any time the status of an order: not paid, money advised, money received.
• Online payment methods (credit cards, PayPal, PostFinance or other debit payments, …): Generally, it should be possible to continue here without any problems. With some payment methods, however, you must be aware that there is a “residual risk” of loosing money, e.g. with PayPal. With credit cards you are pretty much on the safe side with a 3D-Secure contract (liability shift to the customer), you simply have to be able to proof, that you have shipped the package with the correct and insured goods. Debit payment methods are usually no problem aswell.

If the payment method allows it, you can prepare the package for shipping. If physical products have been purchased, put them in the package and reorder goods that are not in stock. (For electronic content² this is of course not necessary and the order is almost fulfilled.)

When you have all your products ready for shipping, you can print a delivery note. The PepperShop module “PDF-Print”³, which can print a delivery note and/or an invoice with one click, is the most convenient way to do this.

If you use the Webstamp module from the Swiss Post or another connected franking solution, you can now generate the franking and print the label (details, see instructions for the Webstamp module⁴) and enclose it with the delivery note / invoice - e.g. in a document bag. If you send the parcel abroad, PepperShop offers modules for export declaration and even duty deliviery paid solutions. When the package is ready to ship, proceed to the next chapter.

Order Status: “shipped”

You can now ship the package.

After you receive the tracking number from your logistics partner for the individual, submitted packages and are using the package tracking⁵ module in the web shop, enter this identifier in the corresponding field in the shop administration (menu point “Order Tracking”). If you use an integrated franking solution such as “Webstamp” or “Shipping Options”, this is done automatically for you.

Now we have all the information to send an update to the customer and tell him, that his order has been shipped. To send this “shipped message”, PepperSholp offers two different ways in the customer management of the shop administration:

a) Click on the button Send (envelope) for each order that you have sent. For security reasons, the shop asks again whether you really want to send an information email to the customer. Confirm with “OK” if you have not forgotten anything.

b) Use the drop-down menu in the list of orders in the customer management. Change the order status to “shipped” for each of the corresponding orders.

Now the order status is automatically changed to “shipped” and the customer is informed by email that his order has been shipped. If the parcel tracking module is used and a tracking number has been entered for the order, this will be sent in the email.

Order Status: “completed”

The goods have been shipped and therefore the order processing is almost completed. When the order status changes to completed, the order is marked as “completed” accordingly.

We recommend that the order status is not set to “completed” until the money has actually been credited to your account (with cash before delivery and cash payments there is no need to check again). Be especially careful with online payment methods and really make sure you check the payment status before you change the order status to “completed”. Credit card funds are sometimes transferred much later in a collective payment. Based on our experience, we can report that even large financial institutions have had very seldom issues, like transactions that have not been transferred. In addition, the corresponding order data can now be transferred to financial accounting, if not done automatically with a connected ERP system.

If you send goods and accept payment by invoice, we would like to give some more information here:

• Payment by invoice with no further protection can be very “dangerous”. Depending on the customer segment and branch of industry, the risk of large payment defaults is often unacceptably high. Here your own experience will certainly help. Especially for shop owners who have started a new business, we recommend to deactivate this payment method or have it protected by a third party tool.
• If payment by invoice is to be offered, we recommend introducing a credit check⁶ to keep the default risk low (e.g. with the CRIF Deltavista⁷ module, there are several more..).
• There are also modules and connectors to backend systems to automatically processing your orders or for the creation of Swiss QR-invoices, such as the module for printing payment slips. Many Providers that offer factoring services and payment guarantee are also available as modules.
• With the payment status module¹ you have an overview of your open items also without an external system.

With certain type of products you have to expect more ore less returns. Think about the handling of returns at an early stage and support the customer with appropriately prepared return slips. PepperShop offers a returns management including a return slip printer within its “fulfillment” module, which offers a barcode based fulfillment support.

Further help

Do you need further support? PepperShop provides you with different options.

• Often a click in the administration on the top right on the question mark icon helps. Here you can get direct help on the relevant topic.
• Various answers can be found in the FAQ. These can also be called up in the shop administration via Help&News -> Help archive. Or via our homepage https://www.peppershop.com/de/services/support/faq/
• At the PepperShop Academy https://www.peppershop.com/de/services/academy/ you can find various free video tutorials.
• We are also available to you by email or phone (CHF 185./h) support@glarotech.ch or +41 71 923 08 58