CartThrob Order Manager

CartThrob Order Manager is the control-panel application for reviewing and fulfilling orders saved by CartThrob. It ships with CartThrob, but it remains a separate ExpressionEngine add-on so administrators can install it only on sites that need back-office order management.

See the Order Manager changelog for changes included with CartThrob 10.0.0.

Use Order Manager to:

review saved orders and purchased items;
update order statuses in bulk or individually;
resend completed-order notifications;
save tracking numbers and shipping notes;
capture, void, or refund payments when the gateway supports the action;
print invoices, packing slips, and other order-specific templates;
create order, customer, product, and discount reports; and
export report data as CSV or XLSX.

Requirements

CartThrob must be installed.
CartThrob must be configured to save orders to an ExpressionEngine channel.
At least one order entry is needed before most screens contain useful data.
The current member must have permission to access Order Manager and any ExpressionEngine templates selected for custom reports.

Installation

Order Manager is included in the CartThrob package at system/user/addons/cartthrob_order_manager, but it is not installed automatically with the main CartThrob add-on.

Install and configure CartThrob.
Open Developer → Add-Ons in ExpressionEngine.
Find CartThrob Order Manager and select Install.
Open Order Manager and confirm that the dashboard loads.
Open Settings to choose optional invoice and packing-slip templates.

When updating CartThrob, deploy the matching Order Manager files and run any available ExpressionEngine add-on updates.

Start here

For a first end-to-end test:

Complete a test CartThrob order.
Open Order Manager → Orders.
Select the order and verify its customer, totals, purchased items, options, gateway, and transaction ID.
Add a test tracking number and shipping note.
Resend the completed-order email to a test address.
Run an order report and export it once as CSV.
Configure the sample invoice and packing-slip templates if the CartThrob sample store template group is installed.

Order Manager pages

Dashboard — sales totals, recent orders, date ranges, graphs, and custom report output.
Orders — browse orders, change statuses, and open an individual order.
Order detail — review one order, manage fulfillment, send email, and perform supported gateway actions.
Order report — filter, save, rerun, and export detailed order reports.
Customer report — group order activity by customer.
Product report — review purchased products and configurations.
Discount report — inspect recorded discount and coupon use.
Settings — configure invoice, packing-slip, custom output, and custom report templates.

Common workflows

Fulfill an order

Open the order detail page, verify the purchased items and addresses, then add the tracking number and shipping note. Select the appropriate order status and submit the tracking form. Tracking values can only be saved when the mapped order fields exist.

Review a Processing order

Processing can mean an offline payment is outstanding or, with CartThrob 10 payment reconciliation, a payment needs investigation. Read the payment notice before fulfilling an order or requesting payment again. Deploy the matching system/user/addons/cartthrob_order_manager files as well as CartThrob’s files; the review labels and payment-action restrictions include Order Manager code.

An order’s saved line items are separate from optional Purchased Item channel entries. A reconciliation hold keeps available order line items but withholds new Purchased Item entries. Ordinary Processing still creates those entries when Save Orders and Save Purchased Items are enabled and configured.

A new reconciliation hold sends configured Processing notifications instead of Completed notifications. No notification or recipient is created by the update. The message should check payment_review and distinguish confirmed collection from an unknown result. See Processing notifications for payment review.

Mark reconciled records the investigation result only. It does not create missing Purchased Item entries, run deferred checkout work, or send a Completed notification. Changing the order’s EE status also does not complete checkout; configured status-change notifications can still run.

Paid-order completion provides Complete paid order — no charge for eligible saved ordinary checkouts. Choose whether payment is accepted as-is or accepted with an adjustment. Both require explicit verification and create missing configured Purchased Item entries while finishing supported local checkout work. Refunded, unpaid, and manually handled outcomes remain record-only. The linked guide covers required fields, notification behavior, interruption handling, and manual-recovery cases.

Resend a completed-order email

The resend form uses CartThrob’s completed-order notification configuration. The address and subject shown in Order Manager can be changed for that send. This action does not create a separate notification template.

Refund, capture, or void a payment

These controls are conditional. They appear only when the order and selected gateway support the operation. Always verify the gateway response before changing fulfillment status.

Some gateways require merchant actions outside Order Manager. In particular, PayPal Standard and PayPal Advanced refunds must be completed in PayPal; Order Manager returns an explanatory message instead of attempting the refund.

Create a reusable report

Open Order Report, choose the filters and output fields, and generate the report. Give the criteria a title to save it for later use. A saved report stores the report definition, not a frozen copy of its results.

Order fields used by Order Manager

Most order values come from the fields mapped under CartThrob’s order settings. These additional short names enable specific Order Manager workflows:

Field short name	Purpose
`order_tracking_number`	Stores the shipment tracking number.
`order_shipping_note`	Stores the fulfillment or shipping note.
`order_refund_id`	Stores refund bookkeeping data when the gateway and workflow provide it.

If a field is missing, Order Manager may still display the order, but it cannot persist that workflow’s value.

Templates and reports

Order Manager does not provide front-end template tags of its own. Its printable documents and custom reports are standard ExpressionEngine templates that may use ExpressionEngine channel tags and CartThrob tags.

For invoice, packing-slip, custom-template, and custom-report setup—including the templates shipped by CartThrob—see Order Manager Settings.