Understanding the order life cycle as a seller

Because the wholesale (B2B) ordering process generally involves larger quantities and longer timelines than retail (B2C) sales, a "quote and negotiate" model often makes more sense than a simple "checkout" button.

As such, an order in Candid can cycle through a number of states before being locked in. At a high level, the states are:

DRAFT

• Draft - An unsent order that you're working on

IN DISCUSSION

• Inquiry - An order that has been sent from buyer to seller (or seller to buyer) but not yet viewed
• Discuss / Awaiting Response - An order that has been seen by both buyer and seller but is not fully approved
• Partially Approved - An order where either buyer or seller has approved, but not both

APPROVED

• Approved - A finalized order, where both buyer and seller have approved
• Shipped - A finalized order that has shipped

Let's go over these different order states in more detail below.

Draft

All orders start out as Drafts. In this state, you can build the order at your own pace – everything is saved with each keystroke, and no one outside of your company can see it.

When you're ready to send it to the customer, click the "Send Order" button:

Note: Sellers, if you have prior authorization from a buyer, you can skip to the end by Pre-Approving the order:

Inquiry

Once an order has been sent, it enters the Inquiry phase. Any order with this state has been sent to the other company, but not yet approved.

Note: If you notice you aren't getting a response from the customer you can send them a message through the message portal on the order form:

Final steps

Once both parties have approved the order, its status becomes Approved. For the buyer, there's nothing to do here but await shipping and payment information. For the seller, you can do one or more of the following:

• Send an invoice
• Send a shipment
• Edit the order

Shipped orders

Finally, when the order has been shipped, the status is marked Shipped and the order lifecycle is complete.