See What Sold, to Whom, and When
There is now an orders screen behind your store. Every enquiry becomes a record you can move through statuses, annotate and search.
What it is, given there is no checkout
Because purchases go through direct contact rather than an on-site checkout, as explained in the store announcement, an order here starts life as an enquiry. Somebody asks about a product, that becomes a record, and you move it along as things happen: enquired, agreed, paid, sent, done.
It is deliberately simple. This is a record, not an accounting system.
Why it beats the alternative
The alternative is your email inbox, and it fails in a specific way. An enquiry arrives, you reply, they reply, you agree a price, they pay, and then three weeks later you cannot remember whether you posted it. There is no state anywhere except in a thread you have to reconstruct.
Selling four or five things a month is exactly the volume where this happens: enough to lose track of, not enough to justify a real system.
What each record holds
- Buyer name and contact.
- Product or products, and the agreed price.
- Status, with the date it changed.
- A notes field, which is where the useful information actually lives.
- Where the enquiry came from: the store page, a specific product, or your contact form.
What it does not do
It does not take payment, calculate tax, produce invoices or talk to a shipping provider. If you reach the point where you need any of those, you have outgrown this and should be using a proper commerce platform, and we would tell you the same thing if you asked.
This is for the long stretch before that point, which for most performers is the whole time.
One habit worth forming
Write in the notes field at the time, not later. "Signed, dedicated to Marta, posted second class Tuesday" is thirty seconds now and answers every question that will come up in six weeks.
Related: product categories and images, and visitor messages, which is where enquiries arrive.
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