WhatsApp Order Manager Tutorial

What the tour covers, step by step

Turn a customer's messages into an order, move it along to delivered, and let the Stock manager keep up by itself.

1. 01

   What is still in your hands

   Four numbers: orders not yet delivered, how many of those still owe you money, what they add up to, and what reached customers in the last 30 days.

   Read the narration

   Welcome to the Order manager. When customers order over WhatsApp, the hard part is not the selling — it is remembering. Who confirmed, who paid, what has actually left the shop. This page keeps that in four numbers. Open orders is everything that is not yet delivered and not cancelled. Awaiting payment is how many of those are still unpaid or only partly paid — the ones to chase. Open value is what all the open orders add up to, in the currency you chose. And delivered in the last thirty days is the money that has actually reached a customer's door. Nothing here is typed in; it is all worked out from the orders below.

2. 02

   One column per status, one button per card

   One bar for search, filters and the Table / Board switch. Draft is a quote, Confirmed a real order, Packed and Shipped follow the parcel, Delivered closes it. Returned is the parcel coming back; Cancelled the exit before it left. Each card has one button: its next step.

   Read the narration

   Above the orders sits one bar: search by order number, customer, phone, tracking number or product, two filters, and the switch between Table and Board. In Board view every order sits in one of seven columns, and each name means something specific. A draft is a maybe — the customer asked, you wrote it down, nothing has been promised and no stock has moved. Confirmed means it is a real order: the customer said yes, and by default this is the moment your Stock manager is told. Packed and shipped follow the parcel out of the door, and delivered closes the order. Returned is the parcel coming back — rejected at the doorstep, or sent back later — and the stock goes back on the shelf. Cancelled is the exit before anything left. On each card you see who, the total, a calm pill for the payment — and, once there is one, the tracking number, with a copy button. There is exactly one button on a card: the next step. Click the card itself and the order opens in a drawer, where a stepper shows how far it has come and the footer offers that same single next step, so an order can never jump backwards by accident.

3. 03

   Create an order from the chat

   In the chat-tools panel, the Orders tab has one button. It reads the last 30 messages of this chat — in English, Sinhala or Singlish — and drafts an order. Nothing is saved yet.

   Read the narration

   Now the part that saves the retyping. Here is Maria's chat. She asked about mugs, you answered with the prices, and then she told you what she wants, where to send it and how she will pay. Open the chat-tools panel and choose the Orders tab. One button: Create order from this chat. When you press it, InboxCRM reads the last thirty messages of this conversation and looks for the things an order needs — but it only listens to Maria. Your own messages are ignored, so the prices and products you mentioned never turn into an order she did not place. It understands English, Sinhala and Singlish, so mug dekak, or two mugs written in Sinhala letters, both become quantity two. Tip: in the Stock manager, give each product its other names, the Sinhala or Singlish words your customers actually type, and the draft will recognise those too. If you have added your own AI key in Options, the AI reads the same messages too, and its answer is only ever matched against products that really exist in your Stock manager — it cannot invent a product or a price. Either way, what you get is a draft on the screen. Nothing is saved until you decide.

4. 04

   A draft you can correct

   It found 2 × Ceramic mug and 1 × Lavender candle from her messages, the address, her other number and Payment: cash on delivery. Every field can be edited — the mugs became 3, and Add line adds anything not in your Stock manager.

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   Here is what it read. Two ceramic mugs and one lavender candle, because Maria wrote two x ceramic mug and one lavender candle — it understands digits, words like two, and mug x three. The address is the message that looked like one; trim it if you like. The other number she gave, and payment: cash on delivery, from her C O D. And because she mentioned gift wrapping, that message landed in the notes so you do not forget it. The line under the heading tells you how many of her messages were read and how many products it found. Now the important habit: check it, every time. Maybe she rang and asked for three mugs — click the quantity and type three, and the total follows. The gift wrap is not something you keep in the Stock manager, so use Add line and type it in as free text with a price. Free-text lines sit on the order and in the summary like any other, but they never touch your stock. If it missed a product because Maria called it something else, add it from the list. You are the last check, not the machine.

5. 05

   Save as draft, or Confirm order

   Save as draft keeps it as a maybe — no stock moves. Confirm order deducts the catalogue lines from the Stock manager once, as a sale tagged with Maria. Cancelling later puts the stock back.

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   Two buttons, and the difference matters. Save as draft keeps the order as a quote: it lands in the Draft column, and nothing happens to your stock. Use it while the customer is still deciding. Confirm order means she said yes. The order goes straight to Confirmed, and — because your settings say deduct stock when an order is confirmed — three ceramic mugs and one lavender candle leave your Stock manager, recorded as a sale to Maria Silva, at the prices on the order, so the product history shows who bought them. The candle drops to two and turns up in the low-stock panel. This happens exactly once per order; moving it on to packed or shipped never deducts again. And it is reversible: cancel the order and the stock comes back with a line that names the order number. One consequence: once stock has left, the items on the order are locked. To change them, cancel and create a new one — that keeps the ledger honest. Let us confirm.

6. 06

   Cash on delivery is not "unpaid"

   The payment method is a fact about the order; the state follows the amount received. A cash-on-delivery order reads "Collect Rs X on delivery" — not overdue — and the cash is recorded when you mark it delivered.

   Read the narration

   Back on the Order manager, the new order is open in its drawer: number one thousand and six, confirmed, from chat. The stepper across the top shows where it is — draft done, confirmed lit, packed, shipped and delivered still to come. The cards below run in the order you work: items first, locked with a small padlock because stock has left; then customer and delivery, with the district and postal code fields named for your country; then payment. The payment method came from the chat — Maria said C O D — and that changes how the order reads. It does not say unpaid in an alarming yellow; it says collect seven thousand one hundred on delivery, in a calm blue, because nobody expects that money until the rider is at her door. Bank-transfer and card orders are different: they show what is still due, and they are the ones the awaiting-payment tile counts. You never pick a payment state from a list — you record what you received, and the state follows: nothing yet, a deposit, the whole amount. For Maria you do nothing now. When you press Mark delivered, the drawer asks one question: record the seven thousand one hundred collected? It is ticked by default; untick it if the courier still has the cash. And if she refuses the parcel at the door, you choose Mark returned from the More menu instead: the stock comes back, no phantom cash is recorded, and the courier's return fee is written on the order.

7. 07

   The tracking number must be seen

   Courier, tracking number, date. No courier? Generate waybill makes an internal one, like LK-1006-K7Q2. Once there is a number it sits in the drawer header, on every card and row, and in the summary — with a copy button.

   Read the narration

   When the parcel is packed and handed over, come to the courier and tracking card. Type the courier, paste the tracking number from the slip, and the date, then Save tracking. If you deliver yourself or your courier gives no number, press Generate waybill and InboxCRM makes one for you — your country code, the order number and four letters, like L K, one thousand and six, K seven Q two — and stores it as the tracking number under Own delivery. In Sri Lanka, Koombiyo and Royal Express can be connected under the orders and send the parcel from this same card; elsewhere the card says so and the generated waybill does the job. Whichever way it arrived, the number is never hidden: it sits in the drawer header next to the order number, on the board card, in the table's Tracking column, in the in-chat Orders tab, and in the summary you send — each with a copy button, so where's my parcel is answered by pasting. Then the footer's one button, Mark shipped, moves the order along. We have just shipped Maria's mugs with Domex. Nothing was deducted from stock again; that already happened when the order was confirmed.

8. 08

   Send the customer a summary

   One message with the items, the total, the cash to keep ready (for cash on delivery), the address, the status and the tracking number, in WhatsApp bold. It is shown first, and goes to the chat only when you press Send.

   Read the narration

   Customers like it in writing. The share card composes one message for Maria: your business name and the order number, each line with its quantity and price, the delivery charge, the total in bold, then one line about the money — for Maria, please keep seven thousand one hundred ready, cash on delivery; for a bank-transfer order it would say the balance due, and for a paid one, received, thank you — then where it is going, and now that it has shipped, the courier and the tracking number. The stars are WhatsApp's bold. Here it is in the preview. Nothing has been sent: this text goes to Maria's chat only when you press Send to WhatsApp, so you can read it first, or press Copy summary and paste it anywhere else. Send it once when you confirm, and again when it ships.

9. 09

   The order remembers

   Every status change with its date and time, newest first, the moment stock was deducted, the tracking number — and, for a return, the reason and the courier's fee — so any order can be explained later.

   Read the narration

   At the bottom, the history, newest first. Every status change is written down with the date and time: shipped at five past two, with Domex and the number; confirmed at ten forty-two, with the note that stock was deducted for two items. A return writes down why — rejected at the doorstep, customer not reachable — and what the courier charged for the round trip. Look at Ahmed's order, delivered last week, and you can read the whole journey from draft to door. Look at Kamal's cancelled one and you can see the day the stock went back. Nothing here is edited by hand; it is written as things happen. So when a customer asks why their parcel is late, or you wonder whether an order was ever confirmed, the answer is one click away.

10. 10

    Take your next order from the chat

    Open the real Order manager, and next time a customer says yes, press Create order from this chat, check the draft, and Confirm. Next: the Workflows tour.

    Read the narration

    That is the Order manager. My advice: start with the next real order. When a customer says yes, open the Orders tab in their chat, press Create order from this chat, read the draft as if you were checking a colleague's work, and confirm. Then follow the one button in the footer: packed, shipped, delivered. Add the tracking number when it ships — or generate one — and send the summary both times. Record cash on delivery when you mark it delivered, and if a parcel comes back, mark it returned so the stock and the money stay honest. The Stock manager keeps up on its own, and the front page tells you every morning who still owes you money. Open the real page from the button here, or carry on to the Workflows tour and build a bot that answers the first message for you.