Orders management

The order management system and how orders flow from placement to fulfillment and refunds

The OMS centralizes orders from all markets in one place — each order moves through payment and fulfillment statuses that you can customize with options like delayed capture, auto-capture, and partial refunds.

Order management system

Commerce Layer provides an order management system (OMS) that allows you to manage orders across different statuses in one place. The OMS covers the full process from when a customer places an order to fulfilling it.

You can receive all orders from any supported market and fulfill them in a centralized hub. You can also integrate third-party systems to automate workflows and customize your order management pipeline.

Order fulfillment

An order is initially created in draft status. Draft orders act as shopping carts and become pending when the customer adds line items and their email address. All pending orders have a payment status of unpaid and a fulfillment status of unfulfilled.

The customer adds one or more line items to the cart and selects one of the available shipping methods. Applied discounts and gift cards are subtracted from the order total before checkout. At checkout, the customer enters their billing and shipping address and selects a payment method supported in their market. Existing customers can reuse a payment source from a previous order or choose a new one.

When an order is placed (payment successful), its payment status becomes authorized. The payment is then captured and the amount is debited from the customer's payment source. Before capture, the customer can cancel the order — cancelled orders have their payment authorization voided and a payment status of cancelled. Captured orders become approved and ready for shipment. The fulfillment status becomes fulfilled once all shipments are shipped.

By default, payments must be captured before fulfillment can begin. You can override this by allowing delayed capture at the payment method level. You can also unify authorization and capture by enabling the auto-capture option to automatically capture payments upon authorization.

A customer can request a refund at any point once the payment is captured. You can refund payments partially or fully. The market associated with the order determines the price list, inventory model, payment methods, and all related business rules.