A WooCommerce manual order may be a commonly overlooked feature. In this article, you'll learn how to place a manual order in WooCommerce using the rich options you have without any plugins!
Table of contents
- 5 steps to create a WooCommerce manual order
- WooCommerce manual order - more options
- When to use a manual order in WooCommerce? Examples
Everyone would like to speed up WooCommerce orders and automate things. Most customers will end up using a standard way of placing orders. But, there may come times when you'll need to make one manually.
5 steps to create a WooCommerce manual order
It's easy to make a manual order, right? Yes and no 🙂.
Follow each step of the process and see if there is anything helpful to speed up your work!
As easy as it seems, WooCommerce has a lot to offer, and some options are worth mentioning. Especially, when you want to make sure your orders and invoices are correct.
1. Add a manual order in WooCommerce
You may add a manual order after logging in to your WordPress as an administrator. Other WordPress roles should have appropriate permissions to create and edit orders.
There are three places for adding a new manual order in WooCommerce:
- Mouse over + New in the WordPress Admin bar and click Order. You can do this from the WP backend as well as from the frontend.
- Go to WooCommerce → Orders and click the Add order button.
- When editing any order click the Add order button at the top.
2. Enter customer data
Whatever the method, next you'll see a new order screen with a date but without any details.
First, let's add customer data. You can do it faster by choosing an existing customer from your WordPress. Type in the first letters of a customer name, email address, or user ID. WooCommerce will look for and show you matching results.
After choosing one WooCommerce will insert available data into billing and shipping sections. Add, change, or remove data if you need to.
You can also add, edit, or check customer data in Users → All Users → Edit → Customer billing address and Customer shipping address.
3. Choose products, fees, taxes, shipping, and coupons
Next, move to add some items. You can Add items and Apply coupon (or coupons) here.
Click on the Add item(s) button to see available options.
When adding a manual order, WooCommerce lets you choose:
- Add product(s) - type in a few characters to find matching WooCommerce products. Set quantities and add products to your WooCommerce manual order.
- Add fee - you can also add a custom item with a fee. Enter the fee name and add it. You will be able to set the price and tax by editing the item. It's possible to set a negative price as well, for example, to insert discounts next to the products.
- Add shipping - after selecting shipping, you'll need to edit it to decide about its cost, tax, and name, but also the shipping method and meta you want (name/value pairs).
- Add tax - WooCommerce will show available tax rates, and you can add a new tax column to your order item list. The column name is a tax rate name you set.
Provided you have enabled taxes and set tax rates in WooCommerce 🙂.
After adding items, you can also make sure taxes are correct by clicking the Recalculate button. WooCommerce will recalculate taxes based on the customer's country (or the store base country) and update totals properly.
Coupons
You can also add a WooCommerce discount coupon by entering the active coupon code.
That will affect the manual order total value based on the WooCommerce coupon(s) you use 👍.
4. Custom meta and download permissions
Also, you can choose or add a new custom meta if you want to:
WooCommerce manual order can also grant download permissions for digital products. So, you can search for a downloadable product and grant access to it to the customer.
5. Order status and placing a WooCommerce manual order
Finally, you need to choose the order status. By default, WooCommerce sets it to Pending payment but you can choose from available order statuses.
Check the order data and Create a new manual order. That's it 🙂!
WooCommerce manual order - more options
1. Order notes
If you want to add a note to the manual order WooCommerce has it too! Order notes can help during shipping, refunds, and managing WooCommerce orders by employees.
You can understand the order history, customer needs, and delivery, or see status change info.
As you can see, adding a private note is a piece of cake 💪. What's more, you may send a short message to a customer directly from Order notes.
2. Attribution
It's a useful functionality that will show you the origin of your customer. For example, for manual orders, WooCommerce will tag the order source to Web admin.
3. Customer history
After saving a WooCommerce manual order for an existing customer, you will see his/her purchase history!
Of course, you can combine the knowledge of customer total orders, revenue, and average order value with order notes. For example, to send the customer a thank-you note or a coupon for the next purchase.
4. Order actions
A manual order has the same options as standard WooCommerce orders. You may:
- Email invoice/ order details to customer
- Resend new order notification
- Regenerate download permissions
These actions are self-explanatory. You can also delete or update the order right below actions.
When to use a manual order in WooCommerce? Examples
Why use a manual order in WooCommerce when you have automatic ones 🤔?
Let's see some reasons why you may need a manual order:
- Phone orders
- Email orders
- Invoicing
- Testing
- Custom orders with fees, additional discounts, or tax rates
Summary
After this article, you probably won't need more information about the WooCommerce manual order 🙂 If you feel something is missing or needs more explanation, contact us.
