Order Lifecycle and Statuses
Order lifecycle and statuses
Every order moves through a series of statuses. The status tells the guest where their order is up to and tells staff what to do next. You define the statuses for each ordering workflow (see Setting up ordering) — their names, colours, icons and estimated times are all yours to set — but each one is based on one of Centro's standard status types.
The standard statuses
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Cart | The guest is still building their basket. The order isn't placed yet. |
| Pending | The order has been placed and is awaiting payment or acceptance. |
| Paid | Payment has been taken successfully. |
| Payment error | A payment was started but didn't complete. |
| Confirmed | Staff have accepted the order and are preparing it. |
| Delivering | The order is on its way to the guest. |
| Delivered | The order has been delivered. This is the end of a successful order. |
| Cancelled | The order was cancelled, by the guest or by staff. |
These are the underlying status types. In your deployment each may be renamed and re-styled to suit your operation — for example "Delivering" might read "On its way". The behaviour is driven by the type underneath, not the label.
How an order moves through its statuses
-
Basket → placed. While the guest is choosing items, the order sits in Cart. When they check out, the order is placed and moves to Pending.
-
Payment. If payments are enabled, the guest pays by card at checkout:
- a successful payment moves the order to Paid;
- a payment that doesn't complete moves it to Payment error.
If payments are switched off for the store, the order skips straight past payment.
-
Staff handling. Staff accept and work the order, advancing it through Confirmed → Delivering → Delivered as they prepare and deliver it. See Managing orders.
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Cancellation. An order can be Cancelled by staff, or by the guest while it's still early enough in the process (see The guest ordering experience).
Each time an order changes status, Centro records the change and can send the guest an email for that status (if you've set one on the workflow).
Statuses and your dashboards
Because every status change is recorded, order activity feeds straight into your dashboards:
- The Orders dataset reports on orders and their values — counts and totals, by status and location.
- The Order status statistics dataset reports on how orders flow — delivery and cancellation rates, payment-error rates, and how long orders take to move between statuses.
Use the orders template on a custom dashboard for a ready-made view of order status, timings and throughput.