Orders, quotes and the statuses

Every order lands under Orders & quotes in your portal at app.mark2form.com: in the menu for all your software together, and as a tab on each piece of software. You view them as a List or as a Board, with a column per status. Open one and you see the design, the price lines, what your customer filled in and their contact details. Whether the design came from Neon Logo or Neon Text makes no difference here.

The five statuses

Status	What it means	What your customer reads
New	Just in, not looked at yet	“We have received your request and are looking at it.”
Confirmed	You have taken it on and planned it	“Your order is confirmed and scheduled.”
In production	You are making it	“Your order is being made right now.”
Ready	Finished, being packed	“Your order is ready and is being packed.”
Shipped	On its way	“Your order is on its way.”

There is also Cancelled. That is not a step in the row but an exit: you can reach it from any status, and there is no way back.

Forward, not backward

You always move an order one step further. Back is not possible — a customer who has just read that their sign is in production should not suddenly see “confirmed” again. Got it wrong? Cancel the order and create a new one if needed.

A note at every step

At every status change you can leave a short Note (internal) (up to 500 characters): “waiting for blue tubing”, “customer calls back next week”.

That note is for you and your colleagues only. Your customer never sees it — not on their status page and not in an email.

Track & trace

When you update the status, fill in the carrier’s code or link under Track & trace. A “Track your parcel” button then appears in the shipping email to your customer and on their status page.

Do not have it yet? Leave it empty — the email goes out without the button, and the text says “to follow” where the code would have been.

What your customer sees: their own status page

Every order has a web address of its own where your customer can follow progress. No login needed; the unguessable link in their email is the key.

That page shows a timeline of the steps already taken, what your customer ordered with the total, and the track & trace and the Pay now button when there are any. What it does not show: your internal notes and other customers’ details. With Open the status page on the order you see what your customer sees.

Search engines do not pick up that page.

Emailing automatically at every step

At a status change your customer can get an email automatically. That saves you keeping customers posted by hand.

By default that only happens at “shipped”, and test mode is on by default: then every status email comes to you, not to your customer. See Status emails.

What else can sit on an order

• A proof for your customer to approve — see Proofs
• A design help request (kind Design help) — see Design help
• Create a payment link and the state of the payment — see Online payments
• A button to create a draft invoice — see Connect your bookkeeping
• Order again: open the same design again in your configurator, when your customer wants the same thing once more. The button is only there when the ordered design was saved