View, Search, and Sort Orders

Methods for managing the list of orders in the Order grid by controlling the view, sorting, or using search.

Once you have orders in ShipStation, you can view and manage them in the Orders tab.

Closeup of Toolbar with Orders tab selected

ShipStation offers several ways to view, search, and sort your orders so you can find the orders you need when you need them. This includes viewing your orders based on order status, using the search tool, and sorting the grid by field.

To learn how to use filters, review the Filter Orders article.

Understanding Order Statuses

The sidebar of the Orders grid displays the various order statuses your orders could be in.  ShipStation displays Awaiting Shipment orders by default.

If the order is paid for and ready to ship, the order status in ShipStation should be Awaiting Shipment. Most of your orders will import directly into this status.

V3 Orders tab left-hand sidebar, Order statuses. Red box highlights Awaiting Shipment status.

Once you create a label for an order, the order will automatically move into the Shipped status. Other actions you take can move orders into other statuses. Also, depending on the stores you connect, orders can sometimes import into other statuses like Awaiting Payment. Review the details in the status table below to learn more about how order statuses work in ShipStation.

Status

Details

Planning

The Planning status will only appear on ShipStation accounts with Auto-Routing enabled. Learn more about the Planning status in our Auto-Routing help article.

When Auto-Routing cannot route an order, such as when the Ship To address cannot be verified or an item on the order has no assigned Ship From Location, the order will be moved to the Planning status so that any issues can be reviewed and corrected.

Awaiting Payment

Any order indicating it is unpaid will import into Awaiting Payment. Not all stores support importing unpaid orders. Check our Integrations Help articles for order import details specific to your stores. 

ShipStation will update the order status to Awaiting Shipment when the store sends updated information indicating the order has been paid for. Or, you can manually mark the order as paid.

You cannot create labels for orders that are in the Awaiting Payment status!

On Hold

On Hold orders are orders that you do not want to ship right away. You can move orders out of the Awaiting Shipment status so your shippers don't accidentally ship them before they are ready. For example, if an order contains an item for an out-of-stock product or has a fraud alert, you can move it to On Hold status until you are ready to ship it.

You can manually put orders on hold at any time or use an Automation Rule to move orders to the On Hold status when they import. You can also manually remove a Hold on an order from the Orders tab or from within the Quicksearch and Advanced Search.

A few stores, like Magento, support an On Hold status and can send that status to ShipStation as well. Check our Integrations Help articles to see specific details about your selling channel.

Awaiting Shipment

Ready to ship orders will import into the Awaiting Shipment status. This is where most of your order management will take place.

Pending Fulfillment

Orders you send to fulfillment but are not yet fulfilled will move to Pending Fulfillment.

Additionally, Amazon Seller Fulfilled Prime orders will import as Pending Fulfillment, unless you have added Amazon Buy Shipping to your ShipStation account.

Shipped

Once you print a label for an order, ShipStation will move the order into the Shipped status to indicate no more work needs to be done on this order. Orders will also move here when you mark them as shipped. Once the status has changed to Shipped, the order no longer receives updates from the marketplace.

ShipStation can import Shipped orders from your store so you can have a complete reporting of shipped orders in ShipStation.

Cancelled

When you cancel an order in ShipStation, the system will move it to the Cancelled status. Once cancelled, it no longer receives updates from the marketplace.

ShipStation also does not notify your store when you cancel orders in ShipStation. For this reason, we recommend canceling orders in your store first and then refreshing ShipStation. This way, you ensure the order status is the same on both platforms.

ShipStation can still import cancelled orders from your store if you need a complete reporting of all orders in ShipStation.

The statuses for orders in your store may not exactly match the statuses ShipStation uses. That's because ShipStation statuses relate directly to your shipping workflow, which might require different statuses than what your store provides. ShipStation uses a process called mapping to determine which store statuses correspond to which ShipStation statuses. 

For example, the status in your store for an order that is ready to ship might be PaidUnfulfilled, or AuthorizedShipStation imports orders with these statuses into Awaiting Shipment. 

Once you ship an order or mark it as shipped in ShipStation, however, we send a notification to your store so the store will update the order. This ensures the order status remains consistent between both ShipStation and your store platform.

Order Statuses in Your Stores

Each store handles order statuses according to its own standards, and not all stores support all statuses.

For details on supported features and statuses, as well as limitations for specific store platforms, review our Store & Marketplace Integrations articles for the stores you connect to ShipStation

Search Orders

ShipStation has two search options for orders:

  • Use Quicksearch to quickly search for orders based on Recipient Name, Order Item, SKU, Order Number, or other criteria. Quicksearch is a Starts-with style search in the Orders tab, meaning the results of the search are items that start with the search value. 

  • Use Advanced Search when you want to search across all or specific order statuses by combining filtering options and date criteria. Advanced search is a Contains style search for specific criteria in the Orders tab.

Search Results and Order Date

  • Quicksearch has a two year time limit for searching orders. If you need older orders, you can use Advanced Search.

  • Advanced Search defaults to searching orders less than three months old, but you can customize the date filter to search orders as far back as when you started your account.

Quicksearch Orders

Use Quicksearch to locate orders with the following information:

  • Order Number

  • Buyer Name

  • Recipient Name

  • Company Name

  • Buyer Email Address

  • Username (the User's ID from a store or marketplace)

  • Recipient City

  • Recipient State

  • Recipient Address Line 1

  • Item Name

  • Item SKU

  • Tracking Number

Box highlights search field with text SH-, and the term-matching Order numbers in Order grid.

To help understand how the Quicksearch function works...

Quicksearch is a starts-with-style search. For example, if you receive an order from Saul Teesnak, ShipStation will break that name down into Saul and Teesnak. You'd be able to search for this order using Saul Teesnak, Saul, Teesnak, etc. However, you wouldn't find this order by searching for snak because the snak chunk starts with Tee.

The same applies to order numbers separated by dashes. The order number 121-657485676-89705 gets broken down into 121, 657485676, and 89705. You'd be able to find this order by typing in the whole order number, a chunk, or the beginning of any chunk.

You won't be able to Quicksearch for the last few digits of an order number, so use Advanced Search for this instead.

Cancel Orders from Quicksearch

After running a Quicksearch, you can cancel shipments in your search results that are in Awaiting Payment, On Hold, or Awaiting Shipment statuses.

If the order has already been cancelled or shipped the option will be disabled. Hover over the Cancel button to see a tooltip explaining why you cannot cancel orders in those statuses.

Advanced Search Orders

ShipStation provides an advanced search option to search orders by multiple search criteria and to refine the results of your advanced search using filters.

Sort Orders

Use the column headers in the Orders grid to sort orders by criteria like Order Date, Age, Recipient Name, or other order information.

Click-and-drag columns to arrange them in any sequence you prefer. Scroll the screen left or right to view all columns.

Click the text in a column header (for example, AgeItem Name, or Store) to sort that column's contents in either ascending or descending order (alphabetical, chronological, numerical). 

GIF demonstrates how to click column headers to sort orders by Age & Date columns

Group Orders by Common Attributes

The Group By feature allows you to group orders in the Awaiting Shipment status in your order grid by a variety of attributes. This can help you quickly find orders with something in common so they can be prepared together or prioritize to more easily fit into your workflow.

The Group By feature allows you to group orders by the following attributes:

  • Store

  • # Line Items

  • Total Quantity

  • Country

  • Item Name

  • Item SKU

  • Requested Service

Once you create groups in your Orders Grid, you can further sort within the groups and bulk update all orders within a selected group.

To group your orders in the Orders Grid:

  1. Click the Group By button.

    Orders Grid with the Group By menu selected
  2. Select a field to group your orders by from the drop-down menu.

    The group by drop-down expanded, showing the available options.
  3. Click Combine with another field if you would like to add another field to group orders by.

    Group by menu with Item Name selected and +Combine with another field option highlighted
  4. Select another attribute to group orders by, if necessary.

    The Group By button will display how many attributes are currently in use.

    Group by menu with 2 fields selected

Your orders grid will now be sorted into groups by the fields you specified.

Orders Grid grouped by Order Date and Items name

Click column headers to further sort within the groups, or select entire groups to bulk update all orders within the group. You can also add filters while your grid is grouped to refine your view further.

To return the Orders Grid to its original state, click the Group By button and deselect the fields.

View Multi-Item Orders

Orders with multiple items will display (Multiple) in the Item SKU and Item Name columns. These orders will also have a disclosure triangle in the Order # column that allows you to open the order and view all items contained within it directly in the Orders grid.

Available with the New Layout Only

The ability to view the individual items in a multi-item order in the Order grid is not available in ShipStation Legacy.

If you combine orders, this will also create an order with multiple items and multiple order numbers.

The images below show an order with multiple items and an order that has been combined. The combined order also displays (Multiple) in the Order # column.

Orders grid. Boxes outline a multi-item order and an order that has been combined.

Click the disclosure triangle in the Order # column to reveal the multiple items and order numbers in the grid.

Orders grid with multi-item order expanded, showing the items and Order # of the combined order

Group Items in Shipping Sidebar

When you select multiple orders in your Orders Grid, you can tell ShipStation how to group the order items in the Shipping Sidebar. You can select to group them by Orders or by Items:

Orders

Items

Order sidebar with items grouped by Orders
Order sidebar with items grouped by Items

To adjust how the items are grouped, click the action icon Grey gear icon and select the option you wish to use.

Group by menu displays the Orders and Items option

To use this feature, you must select 2 or more orders and check the Show Sidebar option.

Orders grid with 2 orders selected and the Show Sidebar option checked

View, Search, and Sort Orders Legacy Layout

If you are using ShipStation Legacy, the process to sort orders differs somewhat from the new layout. The Advanced Search feature has a slightly different look to the menu, but functions the same in both layouts.

Sort Orders

Use the column headers in the Orders grid to sort orders by to criteria like Order Date, Age, Recipient Name, or other order information.

Click-and-drag columns to arrange them in any sequence you prefer. Scroll the screen left or right to view all columns.

Click the title text (for example, AgeItem Name, or Store) in a column header to sort that column's contents in either ascending or descending order (alphabetical, chronological, numerical). 

GIF shows click on header to sort Age & Item SKU columns. A to Z, & Z to A