How an order moves from quote to shipped

Every order passes between two roles: the submitter, who builds the order and agrees to its price, and the Order Manager at the shop that prices and builds it. Each status tells you whose turn it is.

The submitter is the person who created the order. That’s often a designer working with a customer. It can also be you: when an Order Manager creates an order for a customer, they’re its submitter, and they handle both sides.

The submitter doesn’t change when someone else helps. If a colleague finishes a shared quote and selects Submit Order for you, you’re still the submitter.

Whose turn is it?

Status	Whose turn	What they’re doing
Quote	Submitter	Designing the order and gathering the customer’s details
Submitted	Order Manager	Checking the order and setting the final price
Pending Confirmation	Submitter	Reviewing the price and agreeing to it
Accepted	Order Manager	Scheduling it and setting a ship date
In Production, Staged	Order Manager	Building it and getting it out the door
Shipped	Nobody	Done
Rejected, Canceled	Nobody	Stopped

Submitted and Accepted orders need a decision from an Order Manager. In Production and Staged orders are in your shop. Pending Confirmation orders are waiting on their submitter, unless that’s you.

Why the submitter has to accept

When an order is submitted, the total doesn’t include everything yet. You add shipping, and any other charges your shop uses, after you’ve reviewed it. The submitter hasn’t seen that final number.

Confirm with Submitter sends the final price back to them. Only the submitter can accept it, even if other people can see or edit the order. That way, the order doesn’t go into production until the person responsible for it has agreed to the full cost. It’s also the natural point for the submitter to check the price with the customer.

This is also why the charges lock once you confirm: the submitter is agreeing to a specific price, so it can’t change afterward.

Orders Order Managers create are different. Order Managers often enter orders on a customer’s behalf, so they handle the customer’s agreement as well as the shop’s pricing: there’s no one else to send the price back to. So when an Order Manager’s order is shared with the team, Mattersmith skips the confirmation step, and any Order Manager can carry it through to Accepted straight from Submitted. Whoever accepts it should still check the final price with the customer first. Its charges lock once it’s accepted.

When the submitter is a designer, the order still goes back to them to accept. Permissions has the exact conditions.

Why a ship date is required

You can’t release an order to production without an estimated ship date. The date is what the Dashboard uses to show what’s shipping this week, what’s running late, and how often you ship on time. Requiring it at release means every order in the shop has one.

When an order can’t go ahead

There are three ways to stop or send back an order, and they mean different things:

Return to Quote hands the order back to the submitter to fix. Use it when the order is almost right but needs changes. It’s only possible while the order is Submitted.
Reject ends the order because your shop won’t build it.
Cancel ends the order because the customer called it off. Usually the submitter cancels it; see Permissions for who else can.

Once it’s in production

After release, the order only moves forward: In Production, then Staged, then Shipped. These steps can’t be undone, and the order can’t be rejected or canceled, because by then the work has started.

Your first order, part 2 walks through every step.
Order statuses lists every action and who can take it.
Permissions explains who can edit, submit, and accept.