Approving orders

When someone places an order it sits at New, waiting for you to approve it. Approving is the step that invoices the order and takes payment, so it is how an order becomes confirmed and paid. This page covers approving orders by hand. To do it automatically, see Order confirm rules.

What approving does

Approving a New order:

• Invoices it, so the customer owes the balance.
• Takes payment where it can. If the order has a payment authorisation (a card hold from checkout), approving captures it, meaning the card is charged. If the order is already fully covered, for example by a voucher, no charge is needed.
• Moves it forward. A fully paid order becomes Paid; one with a balance still owing becomes Confirmed.

Approving does not chase an unpaid balance for you. If an order is only part paid after approval, it stays Confirmed and you collect the rest through Payments or follow it up under Overdue orders.

Approve orders waiting for review

Orders → Manual Approval

The list of orders that have been placed and are waiting for a decision.

The Manual Approval list shows every order sitting at New. For each one you can:

• Approve it, which confirms it and takes payment as above.
• Cancel it, which rejects it (see Refunds and cancellations for what cancelling does).

You can also approve or cancel a single order from its own page. See Working with an order.

Tip

If approving order after order by hand becomes a chore, set up order confirm rules to approve, hold, or cancel orders automatically based on conditions you choose, and leave only the ones that need a human look in this list.

Approve authorised orders promptly

An order paid by a card hold is only guaranteed to go through while the hold lasts. A payment authorisationA temporary hold placed on a card that reserves the money without taking it yet. It is captured (actually charged) when the order is approved. A hold is only good for a few days: if it is not captured in time it lapses, and payment then has to be collected another way. is valid for a few days after checkout; if you have not approved the order by then, the hold lapses and the reserved money is released back to the customer.

Caution

Once a hold has lapsed, approving the order can no longer capture it. You would need to take payment another way, for example by charging a saved card or recording a manual payment. To avoid this, approve orders with a held payment within a few days of them being placed. Orders placed well before an event, such as saved bookings made before registration opens, are the ones to watch.