Pending orders: what they are and how finalizing works
Every order on your site starts out as a pending order: a cart still being filled, or a plan renewal waiting for its turn. When it finalizes, it becomes a real order. The customer is charged, it appears in your reports, and the kitchen can plan for it.
The Orders & Payments > Pending Orders page is your window into that in-between moment. You see what is coming before it lands, and you can step in when something needs a human touch.
Two kinds of pending order
- Standard. A customer's cart for the current menu. It finalizes the moment they check out. Nothing for you to do.
- Plan. A meal plan or package renewal. Your site builds it for the customer and finalizes it on its own at the Finalize After time shown on the order. It charges the saved card and applies their credits, gift card and any discount on the order.
The Order Type filter at the top shows one kind or both. Two switches keep the list tidy: Hide Orders With No Meals Added and Hide Anonymous Users (shoppers who have not signed in yet). Clear Filters shows everything; Reset Filters takes you back to the usual view.
Opening one pending order
Click a row to see the whole picture: customer, location, delivery date, meals, fees, discounts, gift card, total, and the credits that will apply. If the customer has no working card on file, a warning says so, which gives you time to reach out before the charge would fail.
- Edit Pending Order changes the menu, location, discounts, fees, how it gets paid, and whether the customer gets an email when it finalizes.
- Finalize Now turns it into a real order right away. If a meal in it has sold out or been switched off, the site takes that meal out and asks you to check the order and finalize again. Nobody gets promised a meal you cannot make.
- Send Early Notice Email (plan orders) gives the customer a friendly heads-up that their renewal is coming.
- Impersonate opens your site as that customer, perfect when they are stuck at checkout and you want to see what they see.
Want to make this one order a little sweeter? See How to apply a courtesy discount to a pending order.
How plan orders finalize on their own
- About a day before the Finalize After time, the customer gets an early notice email. Just once per order.
- At the Finalize After time, the site finalizes the order and charges the card. You get an email summary after each run.
- If the card is declined, or the order looks like a duplicate, the order stays pending and shows Auto-Finalize is OFF for this order. The site will not keep retrying on its own. Sort it out with the customer, then click Finalize Now. With the self-serve Finalize Now plan setting, customers can also finalize it themselves from their account. See How to cancel a customer meal plan subscription.
- A plan on a billing hold is skipped until the hold is lifted.
- If a discount code on the order has expired or is used up, the automatic finalize and Run Finalizations drop the code and charge the regular price, so nobody misses a week over a dead code. Finalize Now stops instead and says why, so you or the customer can fix or remove the code first.
Bulk actions
At the bottom of the page:
- Send Early Notice Emails sends the heads-up now to every plan customer whose order is about to finalize. Nobody gets it twice.
- Run Finalizations finalizes every plan order whose Finalize After time has passed, then tells you how many went through and how many did not.
- Clear Pending Orders sweeps out pending orders from older menus, plan orders included. Anything with a Finalize After time still ahead stays put.
- Export to CSV downloads the rows you see as a spreadsheet.
Finalize Now and the early notice need the Support role or higher. Run Finalizations and Clear Pending Orders need Manager or Owner.
What tidies itself up
- An empty cart disappears a few minutes after the customer wanders off.
- When a menu closes, carts left on it are cleared. Plan orders that never finalized are cleared a set number of hours after the next menu starts. You choose that number with the Clear Plan Pending Orders (hours after new menu start) setting on Manage Site > Settings. See How to edit admin settings.
- Finalized orders are never touched.
A cart started before logging in
Shoppers can fill a cart before they log in. When they log in, the cart moves to their account. If the account already has a cart with meals on that menu, the site keeps that saved cart, removes the other one, and shows the customer a short Your Saved Cart notice.
Planning the kitchen ahead of time
Plan orders show up in your reports once they finalize. Want to cook for them before that? The Plan Pending Orders In Reports feature adds pending plan orders to your prep reports. It lives on the Features page.
When a report includes pending plan orders, it says so at the top and splits Total Orders into Finalized Orders and Pending Orders, because the pending numbers can still change.
Customers see their own pending orders on their account page, with the delivery address and the date each one finalizes.
Keywords: unfinished order, unpaid order, abandoned cart, auto charge
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