Create Backend Orders Quicker and Easier Using Our New Streamlined Manual and Draft Order Experience

In June, we announced the kickoff phase of our effort to redesign and improve the manual and draft order experience in the control panel.

Today, we are happy to announce that we have made significant progress on the project, and are currently rolling out the next phase. With this update, you are able to add payment details to an order created in the control panel, thereby making it a “manual order”. In the previous phase, only “draft” orders could be created using the updated order experience.

How manual and draft orders differ

A manual order is an order created in your control panel by you on behalf of the customer. This allows you to take orders beyond the confines of the storefront, such as over the phone or in person. You can add a customer’s payment details (such as credit card information) to a manual order to finalize the order.

A draft order is similar to a manual order, but lacks payment details. A draft order can be saved and accessed later when you’re ready to add payment details, or sent to the customer as a URL link for them to complete on your storefront later, at a time of their convenience.

Modern features to improve your manual order workflow

If you’ve used our manual order experience previously, you know that it involves navigating through multiple pages and numerous fields to complete. Our new streamlined, single-page experience makes order creation faster while allowing for workflow flexibility and is inspired by the optimized checkout flows found on our default checkout.

Effortless order creation

Enter all order details on a single page. Choose to start with the customer or product information, whichever works best for you.

Multi-storefront support

Easily create orders for specific storefronts and currencies. This is a new feature that is not supported in the old experience.

Guest checkout

Accommodate shoppers without accounts by creating manual and draft orders for guest customers. Shoppers will not be required to log in or create a storefront account to pay for their order. This is a new feature for draft orders that is not available in the old experience.

Custom shipping options

Add custom shipping methods to manual and draft orders for added flexibility. This was not possible for draft orders, previously.

Enhanced visibility

Track order creation with staff action logs for improved auditing and reporting.

More accessible

Our new design adheres to our accessibility best practices, ensuring a better experience for all users.

Note that going forward, we will be focusing our development efforts on this new experience and will no longer be updating the old manual and draft order experiences.

Choose the experience your business needs

Even as we add features and improvements to the new manual and draft order experience, the old experience will remain fully available, should you want or need to use it for any reason. Click the Take me back button at the top of the updated Add an order page to return to the old experience.

Certain features are currently not available in the new experience, such as:

The new experience does not support multiple shipping addresses. For now, you will need to use the old experience if you have a manual or draft order requiring multiple shipping addresses.

• Editing a draft order is done using the old experience. Editing draft orders using the new experience is planned for future release.

• The option to automatically email the manual order invoice to the customer is planned for future release.

• The File Upload product modifier type is not currently supported, but is planned for a future release.

• Offline payment methods, gift certificates, store credit, and manual payments are not yet supported. For now, you will need to use the old experience to apply an offline payment method, gift certificate, or manual payment.

• All non-hosted* payment gateways supported by BigCommerce can be used for processing payment for manual orders, except Braintree, Bolt, and Square Payments.

*A non-hosted payment gateway keeps the user on site and does not redirect to a third-party website to complete payment.

Getting started in your store

After your store receives the update, you will see a “Take me there” message and button, inviting you to try the new manual and draft order experience when you go to Orders › Add in your control panel.

Be sure to use the “Give feedback” button in the banner to share your feedback, as this helps us in refining and building out new features to enhance the new manual and draft order experience.

See our new Help Center user doc on Manual and Draft Orders to learn more about how they work in BigCommerce, potential use cases, and other related FAQs.

The final word

For many stores, the ability to create orders on the backend is as important as being able to accept orders on the storefront. We are eager to see what merchants think about the streamlined manual and draft order experience, and we will continue to develop planned improvements while taking consideration for your feedback.