Order Management

Create orders, move them through their statuses, and see what confirming and completing an order does to its listing and invoices.

Order statuses

An order moves through these statuses:

1. Draft: saved but not placed. A draft sends nothing. A draft can become Pending, Confirmed or Cancelled, never a later status. A draft with a shoot time holds that time on the calendar as a pending reservation, so nothing else can be booked over it; it confirms nothing, sends no reminders, and its visit is never marked completed on its own.
2. Pending: placed, waiting for you to confirm it.
3. Confirmed: the work is booked.
4. In Progress: the work is under way.
5. Editing: the work is being edited.
6. Delivered: the work has been delivered.
7. Completed: the order is finished. A completed order cannot change status again.
8. Cancelled: the order is off.

Taking a draft out of draft

A draft can stay incomplete. It can become Pending, Confirmed or Cancelled. It never jumps straight to In Progress, Editing, Delivered or Completed: confirm it first. Before it becomes Pending or Confirmed, LOTULIS checks that it has:

• a client
• a property address, when its services are taxable and the business charges tax, unless a tax location for orders without an address is chosen in Settings > Billing
• the tax rate that applies today for that address or tax location (Edit Order updates the tax when the address changes, and keeps every price)
• no shoot or visit date in the past
• a total that is not negative
• a price for every service that needs a quote, before it is confirmed
• a time that does not overlap another booking on the calendar, another draft's time included

If something is missing, the order stays a draft and every reason shows. On Edit Order, the other changes are saved, and the message says which status the order keeps and why. An overlap can be booked anyway from Edit Order. An order made from an estimate keeps the tax that was agreed.

Opening an order never changes its prices. When a draft is opened on Edit Order, LOTULIS compares its saved prices with today's. If any changed, it lists them: click Apply current prices to use today's, or Keep saved prices. Custom items keep their prices either way. Until that choice is saved, a draft whose prices changed stays a draft, from any page. An order made from an estimate keeps the agreed prices, so it has no Recalculate Pricing.

A draft tells no one. Saving it, moving or cancelling its time, adding people to it, or cancelling it sends nothing to the client or the team, so the calendar offers no Notify choice for a draft's time. The team members on a draft are told once, when it becomes Pending or Confirmed. Moving a draft to Pending asks whether to send the client the Order Created email, with Save quietly first.

Creating an order

1. Open Orders in the sidebar and click New Order.
2. Under Clients, choose the client.
3. Enter the property address, or link an existing listing. Add Square Footage and Home Price if your pricing uses them.
4. Under Services, select what the client ordered. Price Summary shows the total.
5. Under Schedule, set the Shoot Date and Shoot Time.
6. Click Create Order, or Save as Draft to finish later. With Confirm order immediately unticked, the order is saved Pending, and LOTULIS first asks whether to send the client the Order Created email.

Confirm order immediately is ticked by default, so a new order is created as Confirmed. Untick it to create the order as Pending and review it first.

What happens when you create an order

• A listing is created for the address, with the status Processing, unless you tick This order does not require a listing or add the order to an existing listing.
• The calendar holds the time for each scheduled session.
• The client hears about it: a Pending order sends the Order Created email; an order confirmed on creation sends the Order Status Update email.
• Prices come from your services, their pricing strategies, modifiers and client segments.

Confirming an order

Confirming an order:

• creates its listing, if it should have one and does not yet
• puts it on your calendar
• creates a draft invoice, which is never sent on its own

It works the same from Edit Order, the orders list, the calendar and the dashboard. If the order's time cannot be booked, nothing is confirmed: no listing, invoice or email, and the order keeps its status. If the listing or the invoice cannot be made, the order is confirmed and a message says what to do.

When you change an order to Confirmed or Cancelled, LOTULIS asks whether to tell the client. Choose Notify client to send the Order Status Update email to every client on the order, or Save quietly to send nothing.

Cancelling an order deletes its draft invoices, voids sent or overdue ones, and keeps paid ones.

Completing an order

Choosing Completed opens the Complete Order window instead of changing the status straight away. From there you can:

• Send Invoices: send the order's draft invoices
• Deliver Listing: deliver the linked listing to its customers

Click Just Complete to complete the order without either. Completing creates nothing by itself. One exception: if you deliver the listing and the order has no invoice yet, a draft invoice is created and sent with the delivery.

Orders and listings

• Edit Order shows View Listing when the order has a listing, or Create Listing when it does not.
• Media is uploaded on the listing, never on the order.
• When you change the order's address, the listing's address follows. Nothing else syncs between the two.

The invoice workflow

1. Review the draft under Invoices in the sidebar.
2. Send it with Send Invoice.
3. Track payment: the invoice shows as paid once the client pays.

See Billing & Payments for the details.

Tips

• Fill in property details when a service is priced by square footage or home price.
• Schedule as you create so the calendar holds the time.
• Review drafts promptly so invoices do not pile up.