Submitting an order starts the same process whether a member checks out in your Portal store or staff takes an order in the Console. Rhythm prices the order, finds the settings that control it, charges and saves it, and sends the right emails. This article explains what happens, why an order status can change after checkout, and which confirmations Rhythm sends.
The Checkout Flow
As a buyer moves through checkout, or as staff uses Orders & Inventory › Orders › Process Storefront Order, Rhythm re-prices the order at each step. The price updates when someone adds items, chooses shipping, enters a coupon code, or selects a payment method.
Rhythm does not save the order or charge a payment until someone submits the order. Until then, checkout can preview the price and flag problems, such as a missing required field, without saving anything or charging the buyer. A clean preview is not final approval, because a few checks happen only when the order is submitted, including whether payment is required right away. An order can preview without errors and still be refused at submission.
If checkout does not move to the next page and shows an error about being unable to recalculate the order, the issue is tied to the price-preview step in Rhythm. This often happens because the order has missing or unexpected contact or organization information, not just because of a browser cache or page issue. Check the buyer's contact and organization details on the order, and contact Support with the order's details if the page transition still fails.
If you enter a value in the order's Order Date field while taking the order, Rhythm should save that value as the order's Order Date instead of replacing it with today's date. If the processed order shows a different order date, treat that as unexpected and contact Support with the date you entered.
When a product has its own application, such as a membership package, certification, or event registration, that application’s purchase flow can include safeguards that a manual store order does not. For example, it may automatically prevent a duplicate purchase. Use manual store orders for products that do not have their own purchase flow, or for situations the app-specific flow does not cover.
Store checkout also does not support a custom intake form the way membership and event registrations do. If you need to collect several pieces of information with mixed payment methods that do not fit a simple product purchase, use a separate web form as a more reliable short-term approach instead of trying to model that intake in the store.
What Happens When You Submit
When someone submits an order, Rhythm completes these steps before the order is finished:
- Checkout settings are resolved. Rhythm finds the store's or selling application's checkout settings for that order type. If no settings exist for that order type, Rhythm refuses the order and asks you to configure the application first.
- Accounts are filled in. Rhythm uses those checkout settings to fill in the order's business unit, currency, and merchant or bank accounts.
- The order is assigned to a batch. Rhythm posts every new order, along with its invoices and payments, into the batch selected by your Rhythm account's batch settings. If your Rhythm account has no batch-assignment settings configured for orders, Rhythm refuses the order instead of leaving it without a batch.
- The order is priced, charged, and saved. Rhythm prices every line, applies any coupon, captures payments, and saves the order, its invoices, and its payments. See How Order Pricing Works.
- Fulfillment is announced. If the purchase can be delivered now, Rhythm tells the selling application so it can act. See How Fulfillment Is Triggered for when fulfillment happens right away and when it waits for payment.
- Confirmation emails go out.
Behind the scenes, Rhythm can use either of two techniques to save and charge an order in your Rhythm account. The technique does not change what the buyer sees, the price they pay, or the confirmations they receive.
Why an Order's Status Can Change After It Is Placed
Staff does not set the order status, or each line's status, directly. Rhythm calculates status from what has been paid and fulfilled so far.
Because Rhythm recalculates status instead of saving it once, the status you see can change after the order is placed. When a payment comes in, a line ships, or a line is cancelled or returned, Rhythm calculates the status again from the current facts. A closed order can show as open again when something changes that affects that calculation.
If payment processing is delayed, a member can briefly still see an open-balance or pending-order banner after payment was entered. The banner remains until the order's own status catches up. Some banners refresh on their own, but a banner tied directly to the order's status clears only when the order's status does.
Occasionally, an order-processing error is intermittent and hard to pin down, even when the order, its payment, invoice, and any related update were all created successfully. If you cannot make the problem happen reliably, note the exact steps that led to it, or record your screen while you repeat them, before you contact Support. That detail is often what makes an intermittent issue possible to investigate.
Confirmation and Receipt Emails
Processing an order can send more than one email, depending on the purchase:
- Order confirmation. Rhythm emails the buyer an order confirmation when the order's bill-to contact has an email address and your Rhythm account has a confirmation email configured and turned on for that order type. Any additional recipients staff added also receive it.
- Product confirmations. A purchased product can have its own confirmation email, configured separately from the order confirmation. Rhythm sends it alongside the order confirmation when the product enables it.
- The invoice, if money is still owed. If the order still has a balance after processing, and the buyer has not opted out of receiving emails, Rhythm emails the invoice for the amount owed. A fully paid order gets a confirmation, while an order paid later gets an invoice email instead: the confirmation covers the purchase paid in full at checkout, and the invoice covers what is still owed. Rhythm does not send a separate payment receipt email for an order paid at checkout; the order confirmation covers it. Rhythm sends a payment receipt instead when a payment is made directly against an invoice, such as when an order is paid later.
Tip
If a buyer says they never received a confirmation, check that a confirmation email is configured and turned on for that order type, and that the order's bill-to contact has a usable email address. If either one is missing, Rhythm does not send the confirmation.
Tip
A buyer can occasionally see an error saying checkout was unable to initialize, most often while starting a membership or event registration purchase. This kind of failure is hard to reproduce reliably, so if it happens again, send Support a screen recording of the steps leading up to it, along with roughly when it happened.
After Rhythm saves the order, staff can review it from Orders & Inventory › Orders › Search by opening the order to its own page.