Managing Purchase Orders in Magento (Adobe Commerce)

When you receive a purchase order in your e-Commerce, confirm that payment is valid, check that inventory can fulfill it, create the invoice, ship and notify the customer, and close the order in the system. In Adobe Commerce, formerly Magento, this flow moves the order from Pending to Processing to Complete, with exceptions handled through review, hold or cancellation.

For a new store, the first order is worth celebrating, because it is the moment the work of building the site, loading products and configuring shipping and payment starts to pay off. For an executive, though, an incoming order is not an administrative event. It is the moment the brand promise is either kept or broken. Speed and accuracy in the order-to-delivery cycle shape repeat purchase, the volume of calls to customer service, the cost of returns and the reliability of the inventory figures finance and operations depend on. Companies that treat order handling as a designed process, with clear owners, rules and integrations, serve more customers with the same team and protect margin on every sale. Companies that leave it to habit pay for it in errors, delays and lost loyalty.

Why does order management matter beyond the transaction?

Every order generates several promises at once. The customer expects the price they saw, the product they chose, a delivery date that holds and timely information if anything changes. Behind the scenes, the company needs payment that clears, stock that matches the system, an invoice that complies with local rules and a shipment that reaches the right address.

When those pieces are disconnected, the symptoms are familiar to any leadership team:

• Customers calling to ask where their order is, which raises the cost to serve.
• Orders sold on the website for products that are no longer in the warehouse.
• Payments in limbo that nobody reviews, so legitimate sales are lost or fraudulent ones are shipped.
• Invoices corrected after the fact, which delays collection.
• Inventory on the website and in the warehouse drifting apart because orders are never closed in the system.

Each of these has a cost that rarely appears on one line of the income statement. Fixing them is less about the platform and more about designing the process the platform executes.

What happens when a customer places an order?

From the customer's side, the journey is short. They sign in or check out as a guest, search for a product, add it to the cart, enter contact and shipping details, choose a shipping method, enter payment information and place the order. At that point, Adobe Commerce creates a sales order, sends the customer a confirmation email and notifies the person responsible for processing orders.

From the company's side, the work starts there. In the Admin, orders are managed from Sales > Operations > Orders, where each one can be located by its order number, filtered by status and opened to see its details. A sound practice is to review this list throughout the day and make sure no order stays in an intermediate status longer than your service standard allows. If you want a broader view of order volume, revenue and customer behavior beyond this grid, our guide to Advanced Reporting in Magento explains what the platform measures out of the box.

What do the order statuses in Adobe Commerce mean?

Understanding statuses is what allows a team to manage by exception. Adobe's documentation on order status lists the predefined statuses, summarized in the table below together with the action each one calls for.

The same documentation explains that companies can create custom statuses, such as packaging or backordered, and assign them to order states. Used well, custom statuses make the real fulfillment process visible. Used carelessly, they add noise, so each new status should correspond to a decision or a handoff.

How do you process an order step by step in Adobe Commerce?

Adobe's guide to order processing describes the standard workflow. The practical sequence for a team looks like this.

Validate the order while it is Pending

Pending is the initial status. Payment has not been processed, so the order can still be edited or canceled. Before moving forward, confirm two things: that the payment is real and that inventory can fulfill every line. If either is uncertain, resolve it now, because correcting an order after invoicing requires more steps.

Create the invoice

When payment and stock are confirmed, open the order and click Invoice. A page with the order summary opens. Review it and click Submit Invoice at the bottom. The order moves to Processing, and the invoice becomes available in the Invoices section of the order.

This step does not always need to be manual. According to Adobe, when the payment method captures funds at checkout, the order moves to Processing and the invoice is generated automatically. Offline methods such as store credit or reward points do not create invoices automatically. Knowing which of your payment methods behave in which way is essential to designing the workload of your team. In practice, the whole step becomes automatic when the store is integrated with the bank and the inventory system: payment confirmation and stock availability are verified upfront, and orders reach Processing without anyone touching them. Once an order is invoiced, the customer also receives the invoice electronically, which is one less reason to call customer service.

Ship the order

Once the order is invoiced and packed, click Ship. On the shipment page, add the carrier and tracking number so the customer can follow the delivery, then click Submit Shipment. When the order has been paid and shipped, its status becomes Complete. Shipping is also the moment inventory moves: according to Adobe's documentation on order status and reservations, each shipment converts the reservation created at checkout and deducts the quantity from the source it ships from, reflecting the products physically leaving your warehouse.

Close the loop with the customer

A completed order is the right moment to ask for feedback on the purchase experience. Short, well-timed questions reveal friction in checkout, delivery or packaging that internal reports never show. It is also the right moment to keep the relationship going with relevant offers; content personalization in Magento Commerce lets you tailor what each returning customer sees based on what they bought.

What should you do when a payment is under review or fails?

Payment exceptions are where many online stores lose money quietly. A payment can end up in review or in limbo when the customer closes the payment window before it finishes, loses connection or meets an unexpected error.

The decision rule should be simple and documented:

• If the payment appears in your processor, approve it so the order continues to Processing and fulfillment.
• If there is no record of payment, cancel the order so it does not hold inventory or distort reports.
• If the transaction is flagged as suspected fraud, escalate it to the person who owns that decision, never to whoever happens to be on shift.

When an order is canceled for lack of payment, contact the customer. Explain what happened, recommend how to complete the purchase successfully and make it easy to try again. A recovered order costs far less than a new customer.

Adobe also notes that orders that have not been invoiced can be canceled directly, while invoiced orders require a credit memo. That distinction matters for finance, because it determines how the refund and the accounting entry are recorded.

How is a B2B purchase order different?

In business-to-business commerce, a purchase order is often a formal document that must be approved inside the buyer's company before it becomes a sale. Adobe Commerce B2B supports this with purchase orders and purchase order approval rules. Buyers with the right permissions define rules based on the order total, the shipping cost or the number of SKUs, and assign the roles that must approve.

For the seller, this changes the operating model. Approval happens on the customer's side, according to the customer's own policies, and the seller receives orders that are already authorized. That reduces back-and-forth with procurement, shortens the cycle for large accounts and gives sales a cleaner view of what is really committed. If your company sells to other businesses, our article on Magento B2B and its importance in businesses explains the broader set of capabilities, and the functional differences between Magento B2B and Magento B2C shows how order handling changes from one model to the other.

Where do companies lose money in order management?

• Orders left open. Orders that are never completed keep web and warehouse inventory out of sync, which leads to selling products that are not available.
• Manual steps that could be automated. Retyping orders into the ERP or creating invoices by hand for payment methods that could invoice automatically consumes time and introduces errors.
• No owner for exceptions. Payments under review, holds and suspected fraud need named owners and response times, or they accumulate.
• Silence toward the customer. A customer who receives no tracking information or delay notice will call, and each call is cost to serve that a timely message would have avoided.
• Weak integrations. Without integration to inventory, payment and logistics systems, every order requires human reconciliation, and the cost of that work grows with every new sale.

What this means for the C-level

• Convert. Treat payment exceptions as recoverable sales. A fast review and a proactive message to the customer protect revenue that would otherwise be lost.
• Retain and build loyalty. On-time, accurate delivery with clear communication is the experience customers remember when they decide where to buy again.
• Serve. Proactive status and tracking notifications reduce the volume of inquiries and let service teams focus on real problems.
• Efficiency. Automate invoicing where payment methods allow it, integrate inventory and ERP, and measure the time each order spends in each status as an operating indicator.

A checklist for your order process

1. Map the current flow. Document every step from order to delivery, who performs it and which system it touches.
2. Assign owners to every status. Each status should have a responsible person and a maximum time before escalation.
3. Review payment method configuration. Confirm which methods invoice automatically and which require manual action.
4. Define exception rules. Write down what to do with payment reviews, suspected fraud and holds, and who decides.
5. Automate customer notifications. Confirmation, shipment with tracking and delay notices should go out without manual effort.
6. Reconcile inventory regularly. Compare system stock with physical counts and investigate differences, starting with orders left open.
7. Measure and review monthly. Track time to ship, order error rate, cancellations for payment and inquiries per order.

How ICX helps

ICX Consulting is a commercial strategy and customer experience firm headquartered in Miami that works with companies across the United States and Latin America. We start by designing the order-to-delivery experience and the operating rules behind it through our process mapping and analysis practice, and then implement it in Adobe Commerce integrated with your ERP, payment and logistics systems. For companies that sell to other businesses, our B2B digital commerce team brings purchase orders, approvals and negotiated pricing into the same design.

To see the order process the way your customers experience it, use the ICX customer journey toolkit to map each step from checkout to delivery and identify where friction and cost accumulate.

Frequently asked questions

Is Magento the same as Adobe Commerce?

Adobe acquired Magento and now offers Adobe Commerce as the licensed, enterprise version of the platform, while Magento Open Source remains available as the free edition. Both share the same order management foundation, including the Sales and Orders area, invoices and shipments. Adobe Commerce adds capabilities such as native B2B features and cloud hosting.

Can invoicing be automated in Adobe Commerce?

Yes, depending on the payment method. When the payment action captures funds at checkout, the order moves to Processing and the invoice is created automatically. Offline methods such as store credit, gift cards or reward points are not invoiced automatically, so teams should know which methods require manual action before planning staffing.

What is the difference between canceling an order and issuing a credit memo?

An order that has not been invoiced can be canceled directly in the Admin. Once an invoice exists, the refund must be processed through a credit memo, and the order then shows as Closed. Finance should decide who is authorized to issue credit memos and how refunds are reconciled each month.

Should every custom status be added to the workflow?

Only when it reflects a real decision or handoff, such as waiting for a backorder or quality check. Each additional status should have an owner and a time limit. Too many statuses make reports harder to read and hide the exceptions leadership actually needs to see.

Every order is a chance to prove that your company delivers what it promises, quickly and without friction. Whether you handle a few orders a week or hundreds a day, a consistent post-sale process is what turns a first purchase into repeat business. Want to know where your order flow is costing you customers or margin? Request a diagnostic with an ICX consultant.