WooCommerce is the most versatile e-commerce system for WordPress, and in these two tutorials I\’m going to show you how to add manual orders and refunds in your e-commerce system.
![\"Manual](\"https://orgspring.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/credit-card-small.jpg\")
Adding Manual Orders in WooCommerce
Anyone who\’s run a store can tell you that customers often can\’t navigate it, no matter how user-friendly you make it. Other times, customers choose to shop directly at your office. This poses a problem for most nonprofits since we\’re not really setup for retail operations. Our stores are usually virtual stores that handle donations and simple sales.
This means we must be able to enter manual transactions – those which we do in-person, or over the phone, for customers who can\’t or wont use our online checkout. Thankfully, WooCommerce makes this a relatively painless process.
There are essentially two ways to add your manual order in WooCommerce:
Adding Front-end Manual Orders in WooCommerce
Manual orders can be added from the front-end through the normal checkout process. This one might seem obvious, but if a customer comes into the store and you need to add that person you can always use the website checkout like you would normally if ordering online.
Simply navigate to the product, add it to the cart, checkout using the customer\’s details. If they don\’t want to give details you\’ll have to check out as a guest – if you make that option available. Of course, this will require the customer to hand you his or her credit card if that is the method you are using to process the order.
If not, you can do it with cash, and since most people don\’t have cash checkout options online, you\’ll need to handle that manual order from the back-end.
Adding Back-end Manual Orders in WooCommerce
Cash orders can be added manually through the back-end inside Woo-Commerce orders area. Simply add a new order using the \”New Order\” link from the top of the Orders admin page.
This will take you to a new order screen where you can select the customer\’s name or checkout as a guest and input new customer information.
You\’ll need to enter a new line item and then the product information. Remember to save the line item so the price and other product data populates. You can enter any tax information or shipping information here too, if applicable.
Save the order and you\’re all set! The video below covers both methods.
Refunds in WooCommerce
Refunds are surprisingly easy to handle in WooCommerce. Formerly, to issue a refund you\’d need to access your payment gateway directly. That means a separate login, looking back and forth between transactions, and a whole lot of guess-work.
Now, WooCommerce has integrated automatic refunds directly into its payment gateways making this a much more user-friendly process.
Automatic refunds work in most major gateways. WooCommerce also offers this tip to find out if your gateway supports automatic refunds. That tip requires you look into the code of the extension – which isn\’t very practical in my opinion, so I\’ve included a list of gateways and extensions that I\’m aware of which offer automatic refunds:
- PayPal Standard
- Stripe
- Simplify Commerce
- Subscriptions
- Bookings
- Pre-Orders
Thankfully, two of these are freely offered gateways that come stock with WooCommerce. But do keep in mind, some payment gateways (like PayPal) will require you to enter API details to make refunds via the gateway available. This is relatively easy to do through the gateway and paste into your settings. We\’ll cover that in a future tutorial, but for now you can view WooCommerce\’s official PayPal API docs here (scroll down to API area), or link to the API section of PayPal directly. For that last link, you\’ll need to be logged into PayPal to access the page.
The video below shows you how to add a manual and automatic refund inside the WooCommerce dashboard right in your website\’s administration area.
Comments?
If you have a question about how to add manual transactions or how to process refunds, feel free to leave a comment here on this blog post or in any one of the linked videos. We monitor comment feeds on the OrgSpring YouTube page and are happy to help if you run into trouble.