Commerce Orbit
Products, orders and B2B sales beside your content · 58 guides
Products, stock and orders for shoppers and businesses, paid through your own Stripe account, with an optional ERP connection.
Using Commerce Orbit
Add products, take orders and keep stock and prices right.
Get started
- ShopsAn organisation can run several shops in Commerce Orbit. Each shop stands on its own, with its products, customers, orders, payments, address and settings.
- Add a shopAdd another shop to your organisation and set it up to sell, from its name and address to Stripe and its first product.
- What Commerce Orbit isCommerce Orbit sells your products on your own website or a hosted shop, takes payment through your own Stripe account, handles business customers and can work with MAM Software.
- Get started with Commerce OrbitThe steps from an empty organisation to a shop that takes orders: settings, Stripe, taxes and shipping, your first product and a test order.
- Connect your Stripe accountMake a restricted key in Stripe with exactly the access Commerce Orbit needs, paste it in, and know what happens if the key stops working.
- Commerce Orbit in the Orbit appSend orders, refund, take returns back, scan a barcode to find a product, count its stock and change its images, look after the shop's media and read your sales on your iPhone.
Catalogue
- ProductsAdd products with options and variants, SKUs, prices in each currency, compare-at prices, images, specifications, SEO text and translations, and choose when they are for sale.
- Bundles and downloadsSell several products together as one bundle with stock from its products, and sell files such as guides and maps as downloads with limits and an end date.
- Custom fieldsAdd your own fields to products and variants, such as a fabric, a care guide or a size chart, with rules for what can be filled in, and send them to your website.
- Volume prices and quantity rulesLower the price when someone buys more, and set the least, the most and the pack size for each product or price list.
- Stock and locationsKeep stock per variant at each warehouse or shop, choose what can sell when it runs out, see how checkout holds stock, and link locations to MAM branches.
- Stock historySee every change to stock, with the count before and after, who or what made it and why: orders, refunds, returns, counts, transfers, purchase orders and MAM syncs.
- Move stock between locationsCreate a transfer, send it so the stock leaves one location, and receive it in full or in parts at the other. How transfers work with MAM.
- Purchase orders and suppliersKeep a list of suppliers, order stock from them, email the purchase order, and receive deliveries in full or in parts so stock and product costs update.
- CollectionsGroup products into collections you fill by hand, or that fill themselves by rules such as a tag, vendor, price or stock, and choose their order.
- DiscountsMake codes such as WINTER15 and automatic offers such as buy 2 boots, get socks free. Take a percentage or an amount off, make shipping free, and decide which discounts work together.
- Gift cardsSell gift cards as a product or issue them by hand. Shoppers pay with them at checkout, partly or in full, and what they don't spend stays on the card.
- Languages and currenciesSell in several languages and currencies, with your own price in each currency rather than a conversion, and translations of products, collections and emails.
Orders
- OrdersHow an order moves from checkout to paid, sent and done, what each payment, sending and MAM status means, and how to find an order and read its history.
- Draft ordersPut an order together for a customer, with your own prices, discount and delivery charge, then send a link to pay by card, place it on invoice, or mark it as paid.
- Send orders and add trackingMark all or part of an order as sent, add the carrier and tracking, and choose whether the customer gets an email with the tracking link.
- Edit an orderAdd or remove items, change quantities or the discount on a placed order. Commerce Orbit works out the new total and VAT, charges or refunds the difference through Stripe, and tells the customer.
- SubscriptionsLet shoppers subscribe to a variant every week, month or year, paid by card through your own Stripe account, with an order for each renewal and cancelling from the shop account.
- Refunds and cancellationsRefund all or part of an order through Stripe, put returned items back in stock, and cancel orders that haven't been sent.
- ReturnsLet customers ask for returns from the shop, approve or reject them, add a return label, receive the parcel, put items back in stock and refund.
- Invoices and receiptsHow companies order on invoice, how invoice numbers and due dates work, what the PDF says, and how to mark an invoice as paid. Card orders get a receipt.
- Reports and cohortsSales by month, totals for the dates you choose, best sellers, how customers paid, and customers grouped by their first order to see how many come back and what they spend.
Customers and B2B
- Customers and companiesCustomers are added from their orders or make an account in the shop. Companies give business buyers a VAT number, a price list and invoice terms, and a MAM account gives signed-in buyers their own live prices and stock.
- Customer segmentsGroup customers by rules, such as what they spent, when they last ordered, their company, tags or country, then filter, export and use the group in discounts.
- Emails to customersThe emails Commerce Orbit sends to customers and when, how to change their wording and translations with variables, your own templates, and sending from your own domain.
- Cart remindersRemind shoppers of the carts they left in up to five emails, each with its own wait, text and an optional one-time discount code, and see how many came back to order.
Your website
- The hosted shopCommerce Orbit gives every organisation a ready shop with product, collection, cart, checkout and order pages, in your languages and currencies. When to use it, and when to sell on your own website instead.
- Markets and their own addressesGroup countries that shop in one currency and language into markets, and put the hosted shop for each market on an address of your own, such as shop.northwilds.no.
- Show your products on your websiteConnect a website space in CMS Orbit, so editors can put products and collections on pages with blocks, with prices and stock that stay current by themselves.
ERP connection
- The MAM integrationConnect Commerce Orbit to MAM Software for stock, prices, trade accounts and orders, try it with the sandbox first, and know what happens when MAM is slow, down or switched off.
- MAM troubleshootingWhat the connection statuses mean, why an order is held or failed, how to send it again or record it as entered by hand, and the messages syncs and settings can show.
Settings and team
- Shop settingsYour shop's name, address, logo and colour, its currencies and languages, the websites that may use it, how checkout holds stock, the emails to customers, the seller on invoices and your order and invoice numbers.
- Shipping and taxesShipping zones and rates, free shipping over an amount and collection in store, and how Commerce Orbit works out VAT: prices with VAT, One Stop Shop, reverse charge, exports and your own rates.
- Who can do whatViewers read everything, Editors also run products, orders and customers, Admins also refund and manage Stripe, MAM, settings, keys and people, and only owners delete images for good.
- Shop accessChoose which shops each Editor and Viewer works in. Owners and admins always work in every shop.
- Plans and the trialWhat each Commerce Orbit plan costs and includes, how the 14-day trial works, and what happens when it ends or when you have more products than your plan allows.
- NotificationsWho hears about new and cancelled orders, failed payments, refunds, disputes, low stock, MAM problems and requests to link a MAM account, and how to choose which ones are also emailed to you.
- The audit trailSee who changed products, collections, orders, customers, codes, settings, Stripe, MAM, keys and roles, and when.
- Orbit connectionsSee what Commerce Orbit shares with Orbit's other satellites, connect website spaces in CMS Orbit, and find where each connection is set up.
- The binRestore products, collections, email templates and images moved to a shop's bin, or a whole shop from the organisation's Bin, and who can delete them for good.
For developers
Show products and take orders on your own website.
APIs
- The storefront APIRead the shop, products and collections, build a cart, check out with Stripe or on invoice and show the order, from your own website. Endpoints, fields, CORS, caching and rate limits.
- Checkout with StripeTake payment on your own website with Stripe's Payment Element, using the client secret and publishable key from checkout, send the shopper to their order page, and know what happens when they never finish.
- Customer accounts and personal pricesSign customers in with an emailed code, keep their customer token on your server, and show each signed-in customer their own prices and stock, live from MAM, in the Storefront API, GraphQL, the SDK and CMS Orbit blocks.
- GraphQLRead the shop, products and collections in one request, with the schema, examples, errors and limits. Carts and checkout stay in the storefront API.
- API keysCreate keys for the storefront API and GraphQL to preview draft products on your website and to see which website calls and how often. Reading works without one.
- The API playgroundTry the storefront API and GraphQL with the shop's own products and collections, see the JSON your website gets, and copy the request as curl or JavaScript.
Events
- EventsThe events Commerce Orbit sends to Orbit Exchange when products, stock, collections, orders and the MAM connection change, what each carries, and how they are delivered. The same events can go to your own systems as webhooks.
- Webhooks to your own systemsSend orders, stock and product changes to your own systems as signed HTTPS posts, check the signature, and how retries, the delivery log and automatic turning off work.