A store on your site sells the things an organization actually sells: a guidebook, a shirt in four sizes, a members' price on both, a download that arrives by email, a table at the annual dinner. This note covers adding a product, the orders list and the weekly job of getting things out of the door, returns, and the settings behind it. If you have not opened the tool before, How to make edits on an Avistra website shows the sign-in.
Orders show people's names and addresses, so the store needs your passkey. Signed in with only the emailed code, it asks you to set one up or use it first. How to set up a passkey on an Avistra website walks through it.
What is where
Choose Dashboard in the bar in the lower right, then Store on the left. Its own list is short: Orders and Products, then Reports, then Delivery and Settings.
Orders opens on To send, oldest first, so nothing sits waiting longest. That is the job: open the store, work down To send, and it empties.
Adding a product
New product opens a form with the store card beside it, so you can see what people will see.
- Name, Description and up to six pictures, the first of which is the cover. A picture you have used before is in the library already: How to add pictures, video and files to a post covers it.
- What it is: Posted or collected, or Sent by email once paid. For something sent by email, give the file or the link and the line the email says; the buyer gets a link that works a few times over a month.
- Price, and a member price for all members or only chosen levels. Who can buy it is separate: Anyone, or Only members.
- Options, for anything that comes in sizes or colors: name the option, list its values, and the table under it takes a price change, the stock and a code for each combination. Leave stock blank for something you do not count.
- When it sells out: show it as sold out, hide it, or keep taking orders.
- Delivery, tax, tags, a limit per order, and whether it is on the store at all or Only for admins, which is how you make something you can put on an order yourself without offering it to everybody.
Stock is held the moment somebody starts to check out, and given back if they wander off. Two people cannot buy the same last one; whoever is slower is told on the cart page, before paying.
Orders
The chips are To send, Ready to collect, Unpaid, Sent, Returns, Canceled and All, with a search by order number, name or email.
An order opens as everything about it in one place: what was bought, the customer, how it is going to them, their note at checkout, and its history. What you do next is the button at the top, and it changes with the order: Mark as sent, Mark ready to collect, Mark collected, or Take payment for one that is unpaid.
- Mark as sent takes a tracking number and link if you have them, and emails the customer that it is on its way.
- Print packing slip, or tick several orders and print them all at once. The same ticks mark several as sent or ready in one go.
- Edit order, until it has been sent: change a quantity or an option, drop a line, add something, change the address, or take an amount off with a reason. It works out the difference and offers to refund it, send a link to pay it, or record it as paid. Stock moves with the change.
- Cancel and refund puts the items back in stock and tells the customer.
An order for somebody else
Somebody paid at a meeting, or phoned. New order takes the customer, the items, the delivery, and how they paid: send them a link to pay, a check, cash, a card at the counter, or no charge with a reason. Member prices are applied for you.
Returns
Start a return on an order that has gone out. Tick the lines, say why, and say what happens: refund to their card, give it as credit for next time, swap for another option, or no refund. You choose whether to put the items back in stock, whether they need to send it back, and whether the refund goes now or when it arrives. A return sits under the Returns chip until it is done.
Delivery
Delivery is the list of ways people can get things: "Post, US", "Collect at the Tuesday lecture", a local drop-off. Each one has a charge, which can be free, per order, per item, or free over an amount, and can be limited to certain states or ZIP codes. A collect choice carries the place and the time, which the confirmation repeats back.
Settings
- The store page: its address, whether tags work as filters, how many products a page shows.
- Codes, the store's discount codes: a code for a percentage or an amount, on everything or on chosen products, with a limit on uses and an end date.
- Customers can cancel an order before it is sent, and ask to return one within a number of days you set.
- The order emails are not here: they sit in Email, then Automatic emails, in the Store group. Confirmation, sent, ready to collect, changed, canceled, return started and refund, each one reworded in your own words.
- About new orders and Stock alerts go to, at whatever addresses you name.
- Order numbers run in order and are never reused.
Money and tax
Card payments go through your own Stripe account and land in Payments beside everything else, with a numbered receipt: How payments, receipts and refunds work. Tax is off unless you turn it on, and then it follows the rates you set by ship-to state. A store admin who does not look after money cannot refund; they ask, and whoever does decides.
Who can do what
Store admins and full admins run products and orders. Refunds are Finance and full admins. Everything is audited.
If you get stuck
Send it to us. Choose Support request in the bar and say what you need: a product with awkward options, a delivery charge to work out, an order that will not behave. How to submit a support request on an Avistra website shows how.