Understand the order lifecycle
What an order is, why it needs three independent statuses, and where quoting and approval fit.
Order management is where B2B stops looking like a consumer shop. A consumer order is one transaction with one status. A B2B order is a frozen agreement that is paid late, ships in pieces, and sometimes waits for someone's approval before it is real at all.
Three articles carry that. Read the middle one twice: almost every confusion in this area, and most wrong dashboards, come from treating three independent statuses as if they were one.
- The order lifecycle — what an order is made of, where orders come from, and the five states.
- The three order statuses — confirmed, unpaid and half-shipped, all at once, and entirely correct.
- Quotes, approvals and negotiation — what the platform models before an order exists, and what it does not.