WooCommerce order numbers aren’t sequential, which can complicate your bookkeeping. Discover how to change or reset order numbers in WooCommerce to ensure they follow a sequential order.
Whenever a customer purchases from your store, WooCommerce generates order numbers automatically. You might have noticed that the WooCommerce auto-generated purchased order numbers are not in sequential orders.
WooCommerce does not have a method to reset or start order numbers with a specific number or even order sequentially. Our Sequential Order Numbers for WooCommerce plugin gives you the option of using incremental order numbers rather than random ones.
Set to automatically reset WooCommerce order numbers on a daily, monthly, or annual basis to estimate how many orders were placed during a certain period of time.
Key Takeaways:
- The WooCommerce Sequential Order Numbers plugin by WebToffee will help you reset WooCommerce order numbers.
- You can auto-reset order numbers at specific intervals – daily, monthly, or annual basis.
- Create custom sequences of order numbers for odd or even-numbered sequences.
Why Aren’t WooCommerce Order Numbers in Sequential Order?
WordPress generates a unique post ID for every element created on your website, including orders, products, pages, categories, and more. As a result, if you create a post, a page, a category, and an order, the post IDs will be assigned in that sequence. When orders are placed between the creation of different post types, this leads to irregular order numbers in your WooCommerce store.
When you receive two new orders with IDs 100 and 101, later, you publish a blog post on your website. Then, WordPress will assign post ID 102 to the blog post. When you receive more orders, they’ll have IDs 103 and 104. Your WooCommerce order dashboard will show orders with IDs 100, 101, 103, and 005 – skipping 102, which was assigned to the page.
This happens because WooCommerce uses the same sequence for both Order IDs and Post IDs. This can be confusing, especially when managing bulk orders.
The free Sequential Order Numbers for WooCommerce plugin allows you to reset WooCommerce order numbers and make them in sequential order.
After installing the plugin on your WordPress website, follow the below steps to reset order numbers on your WooCommerce store.
1. Create New Order Number Sequence
- From the WordPress dashboard, navigate to WooCommerce > Settings > Sequential Order Number.
- Choose a format for the order number. You can combine prefixes, dates, and numbers to create unique order numbers.
- Choose a custom prefix for the order numbers.
- Then, choose the order date format.
- Select the length for the order number and choose the starting number.
2. Reset Order Numbers of Old Orders
- If you want to generate sequential order numbers for past orders, enable the Apply for all orders checkbox.
- Then, keep the Track orders, and Search orders checkboxes enabled to search and track the orders using the new order numbers.
- Click on Save changes to save the settings.
All WooCommerce order numbers, including those from past orders, will be reset to the new sequence.
3. Track Orders Using Shortcode
To keep track of the sequential order number, enable the track order option. Enter the shortcode provided below for tracking orders.
WooCommerce provides this shortcode to link orders based on the order ID. To track orders, add this shortcode in a post.
The screenshot below shows the order tracking page on a website using the shortcode.
You can view all the order details by entering the order ID and billing email associated with a particular order.
This plugin allows you to reset the order numbers for both old and new orders at specified time intervals. For example, if you want the first order of each month to start with order number 1, with subsequent orders following sequentially, resetting order numbers monthly is the answer. You can automate this process with the premium version of this plugin.
After installing the premium version of this Sequential Order Numbers plugin, follow these steps:
- Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Sequential Order Number (Pro).
- Scroll down to the General settings.
- Choose Increment counter as 1. This will create order numbers with the increment of 1.
- Select Monthly interval from the Reset sequential order number to auto-reset the order number sequence every month.
- Then, choose the starting number for the order numbers.
- Click on Save changes to save the settings.
If your WooCommerce store offers free orders through giveaway campaigns or coupon promotions, these orders will be included in the same order number sequence as your regular orders. This can make it difficult and time-consuming to distinguish free orders from paid ones.
To efficiently manage this issue, you can use our sequential order numbers plugin to create a separate order number sequence for free orders. This allows you to easily differentiate between free and regular orders.
To create separate order numbers for free orders:
- Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Sequential Order Number (Pro).
- Enable the Separate sequence for free orders checkbox.
- Then, choose a start number for free orders.
- Enter the prefix for the free order numbers.
- Click on Save changes.
This will create a separate order number sequence for free orders in your store.
The WooCommerce sequential order numbers plugin helps you simplify bookkeeping and order management on your WooCommerce store. By putting the messed-up WooCommerce order numbers in sequential order, you can manage your WooCommerce orders efficiently and error-free.
The plugin allows you to generate custom order number sequences with prefixes, suffixes, dates, and numbers. You can choose the length of the order number, your preferred starting number, and your incrementation value.
This sequential order numbers plugin will automatically reset the order numbers at specific intervals. You can also choose to maintain a separate order number sequence for free orders so as not to mix free orders with normal orders.
In simple words, this plugin can save you from the hassles of random order number sequences and simplify your bookkeeping process.
Key features of this plugin:
- Able to generate custom sequence of order numbers
- Create custom order numbers for free WooCommerce orders
- Customize the prefix, starting number, and length of the order number
- Add a prefix to the order date
- Customize order numbers for all orders or only for new orders
- Tracking orders by custom order numbers
- Shortcode support for order tracking
- You can optionally enable admin order searches by custom order numbers
Frequently Asked Questions
No, the WooCommerce order numbers are not in sequential order because they are assigned from the WordPress post ID. If a new post or product is published on your website between two new orders, the order numbers won’t be in sequential order.
Use the WebToffee Sequential Order Numbers plugin to create a custom sequence of order numbers in WooCommerce. After installing the free WebToffee sequential order numbers plugin, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Sequential Order Number. Then, choose the prefixes for your order numbers and click on Save Changes to save the settings.
Using the WebToffee Sequential Order Numbers for WooCommerce plugin, you can generate separate order numbers for your free orders.
After installing the plugin, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Sequential Order Number (Pro). Then, enable the Separate sequence for free orders checkbox. Choose the preferred number sequence for the free orders and click on Save changes.
To export orders from your WooCommerce store, you can use the free WooCommerce order import export plugin. With this plugin, you can easily export WooCommerce orders to a CSV file.
Refer to this article for more information: How to Export WooCommerce Orders and Products?
Managing your store’s orders efficiently plays a crucial role in boosting your store’s productivity. By resetting order numbers daily, monthly, or annually, you can easily track the number of orders placed within any given period. When your store processes a high volume of orders daily, resetting sequential order numbers can save you valuable time.
We hope this article has helped you reset order numbers on your WooCommerce store. If you have any queries, drop them in the comments section. We’d be happy to help you.
Thank you for reading! Stay tuned for more updates.
Comments (6)
ANDREW ALLEN
November 12, 2024
Hi
We have one site where they have gaps in their order numbers – other sites are fine. Is there a reason for having gaps?
Many thanks,
Andrew
Sanjai Valsan
November 14, 2024
Hi Andrew,
Thank you for reaching out!
The gaps in the order numbers appear to be a site-specific issue. To investigate and resolve this, we recommend contacting our customer support team. They will be able to assist you further.
Timothy
October 14, 2024
Hello,
Is it possible to set the pickup-date in the order number?
Best regards,
Timothy
Sanjai Valsan
October 28, 2024
Hi Timothy,
Thank you for reaching out!
With the Sequential Order Numbers for WooCommerce plugin, store owners can customize their order numbers. However, currently, adding the pickup date directly to the order number isn’t supported.
Sunaina
October 5, 2023
Hi, I am wondering if we enable this feature “Apply for all orders – Enable to apply the above format for all existing orders” in Sequential Order Number for WooCommerce, will it trigger sending emails to all the customers associated with the previous orders when the order numbers are changed (we don’t want this to happen)?
Hema
October 17, 2023
Hello Sunaina,
Thanks for reaching out. If you enable the ‘apply for all orders’ option it won’t affect the already generated orders. So no emails will be sent to the customer’s. But if you place a new order, the post id of that email will be replaced by the sequential number (unless the website uses another email customizer plugins).