Sequential Order Number for WooCommerce Plugin- User Guide

Last updated on January 10, 2022

This is a complete documentation of the free plugin Sequential order number for WooCommerce which helps you convert your WooCommerce orders into a custom and sequential format.

Overview of the plugin

Supports sequential order numbers for WooCommerce
Enable custom formatting for order numbers in your store by adding a prefix and starting number for orders.
Option to have order date prefixes for all orders
Support Subscription orders.
Compatibility with WooCommerce Subscriptions and WebToffee subscriptions plugins.

Installation

You can install the plugin either from the WordPress plugin directory or as a zip downloaded from the WordPress.org website. You can learn more about the installation procedure by reading the article How to install a free plugin from WordPress.

Check out our plugin setup video to get started.

Get started

From the WordPress dashboard, navigate to WooCommerce >Settings > Sequential Order Number.

Settings

Following is the Sequential order number settings window. You can configure the settings as per your preference.

Number format settings

Order number format

Select an order number format with a combination of number, prefix, or date.

Prefix

The prefix will appear at the beginning of the order number. For eg, if you enter ‘WT-‘ as the prefix with the start number as 100, then your first order number will be WT-100.

To add a suffix to the order number you will have to purchase the premium version of the Sequential order for WooCommerce plugin.

Order date format

The order date will appear after the prefix. Pick any of the date formats from the list of pre-defined formats as given below:

Select one or more date formats and use alphanumeric characters to separate them. For example, pick the date format [y]/[m]/[d] separated by ‘/’ to get the order date format as 21/07/28.

Order number length

Maintains a fixed length for order number padded with ‘0’ excluding prefix. For example, entering order number length as 7 with order number 123 and prefix ‘wt’ will generate a sequential order number as wt0000123.

Start Number

Here you can add a custom starting number for your store’s order number.

Preview custom order number

Preview your custom order number with the newly input prefixes and date formats to know how it will appear for WooCommerce orders.

Apply for all orders

Enabling this option will change starting number and/or prefix for all the existing and new orders in your store. If unchecked, it will only apply to the new orders.

Track orders

Enable the track order option to track the sequential order number. Insert the below-given shortcode to track orders.

[woocommerce_order_tracking]

WooCommerce offers this shortcode to link orders based on the order ID. You can add this shortcode as a post and use to track the orders.

Following is a screenshot of the order tracking page on a website created using the shortcode.

By entering the order ID and billing email corresponding to a specific order, you can view all the details regarding the order.

Search orders

You need to enable this option for searching plugin-generated orders from the WooCommerce orders page. If you disable it you will not be able to search custom order numbers from the orders page.

Finally, click on the Save Settings button. As a result, the store’s order numbers will be updated.

Following is a screenshot of an order page containing sequential orders.

In the below screenshot, the values assigned for each field are as shown below:

Starting number – 100
Order number format – [Prefix][Date][Number]
Prefix – WT
Order date format – ‘[Y]-‘ Current year (2021) with a hyphen as separator
Order number length – 6

Conclusion

To sum up, if order management takes up a lot of your time, then the plugin will be helpful in making it easier for you. If you are dealing with lots of orders in your store on a daily basis, you can save time tracking orders quickly.

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Tagged custom order numbering, Order prefix, Order start number, sequential orders, WooCommerce orders

Written by

Haritha

Haritha writes for WebToffee on everything related to WordPress/WooCommerce plugins in simple tutorials, blogs, and documentation to help run your WooCommerce store.

Comments (35)

Margot

January 3, 2022

Hi Webtoffee team,

I would like to start the new year with new sequential orders. Example:
Last order in 2021: 2021-0133. How do I start 2022 with 2022-0001? I already changed the prefix in 2022, but I am unable to restart the order number from 0001.

Please let me know how to change this.

Reply
- Mike
  
  January 8, 2022
  
  Hi Margot,
  
  Thanks for reaching out to us. We understand your requirement. Presently the daily/monthly/yearly wise sequence resetting option is only available on the premium version of our Sequential Order Numbers for WooCommerce plugin. Thanks for understanding.
  
  Reply
KRZYSZTOF STEFANKO

November 8, 2021

Hi. I have order number #3 but on PayU refference I get paid for order 92100. Same info os to DHL and I see adres deatils and order 92100 printed on posting sticker. 92100 was old numeration from previous plug in

Reply
- Mike
  
  November 30, 2021
  
  Hello there,
  
  Thanks for reaching out to us and we are sorry for the inconvenience caused. We have addressed the issue in our latest update. Kindly update the plugin to the latest version (v1.4.2) and check. Let us know if anything.
  
  Reply
Sergio Marta

October 18, 2021

Hi.
Scenario: I have orders 2021-01, 2021-02.
1) In 2021, may I “Restart” with 01-20121 maintaining the older orders?
2) In 2022 how may I restart from 2022-01?
Best regards.

Reply
- Mike
  
  October 25, 2021
  
  Hi Sergio,
  
  Thanks for reaching out. We understand the requirement. However, presently our plugin doesn’t offer any automation for your requirement. You need to do it manually by setting the start number and your custom prefix on your desired intervals.
  
  Reply
Simon Andrew Hardman

October 18, 2021

Hi,

We get an occasional problem when using Paypal & IPN with the incorrect format of the order_id information being sent but the orders are sequenced ok- have you seen this before?

Regards

Simon

Reply
- Mike
  
  October 25, 2021
  
  Hi Simon,
  
  Thanks for reaching out to us. We understand your requirement. Unfortunately, this cannot be fixed at our end alone. We have already contacted the plugin vendor and waiting for their response. We suggest you contact the plugin vendor from your side too. Thanks for understanding.
  
  Reply
Alex

September 15, 2021

After the latest update, $order->get_order_number(); does not work.
It show the WooCommerce Order ID instead of the new Order ID.

Reply
- Mike
  
  September 27, 2021
  
  Hi Alex,
  
  Thanks for reaching out. Kindly raise a ticket here and share the details for debugging.
  
  Reply
  - Nagendra Shukla
    
    November 15, 2021
    
    We are also facing same issue. After update $order->get_order_number(); is returning wocommerce order id (post id)
    While it was all working before update.
    Please help to get it fixed.
    
    Reply
    - Mike
      
      November 30, 2021
      
      Hi Nagendra,
      
      Thanks for reaching out to us and we are sorry for the inconvenience caused. We have addressed the issue in our latest update. Kindly update the plugin to the latest version (v1.4.2) and check. Let us know if anything.
      
      Reply
Masoud Forsat

August 31, 2021

Hello. I’m using the plugin but I have a problem that it generates order number even for abandoned checkouts. How can I modify it to generates the order number only for paid orders?
Thank you

Reply
- Mike
  
  September 6, 2021
  
  Hi Masoud,
  
  Greetings from Webtoffee!
  
  Since the order number generation is triggered when an order is created, there is no option to differentiate them and avoid pending payment orders.
  We will add this to backlogs and consider it in future updates.
  
  Reply
Masoud Forsat

August 31, 2021

Hello. I am using the plugin, but I have a problem.
When customers go to the checkout page and fill the billing information (before entering the card information), the app counts it as one order. I mean even abandoned orders have order number!! So we can not follow order numbers.
How can I solve this?
I want the order number to be only for completed orders.
Thank you

Reply
- Mike
  
  September 27, 2021
  
  Hi Masoud,
  
  Thanks for reaching out. Are you using any third-party plugins for check out? Kindly share the details via this link.
  
  Reply
Stephan

August 30, 2021

Hi and thank you for this tool! As we are using it, we have the problem, that the new order numbers get correctly mentioned in our system – but not in the order confirmation mail. In the mail there we have still the old random order numbers of woocommerce.

Maybe someone can help us?

Kind regards

Stephan

Reply
- Mark
  
  September 1, 2021
  
  Hi Stephan,
  
  We have tested the scenario and we are getting the sequential order numbers in the email as well. Are you using any other plugins to send the emails?
  
  Reply
  - Chloe
    
    October 21, 2021
    
    I have the same issue
    
    Reply
    - Mike
      
      November 30, 2021
      
      Hi Chloe,
      
      Thanks for reaching out to us and we are sorry for the inconvenience caused. We have addressed the issue in our latest update. Kindly update the plugin to the latest version (v1.4.2) and check. Let us know if anything.
      
      Reply
Johann

August 27, 2021

Hi, the last update did not fixed the “Post ID instead of Order ID” Issue for me. Do I need to rollback or what could it be?
Customers still get the E-Mail with Post ID instead of Order ID.

Reply
- Mark
  
  September 1, 2021
  
  Hi Johann,
  
  Are you using any third-party plugins in the site or is it the default woocommerce emails?
  
  Reply
Kat

August 25, 2021

Hello. Can this plugin send the order number to PayPal? It is not sending the custom order number to PayPal. Its using a different number (I think what you would get without using this plugin).

Reply
- Mark
  
  August 26, 2021
  
  Hi Kat,
  
  Kindly mention which PayPal plugin you are using in the site so that we can check for compatibility.
  
  Reply
Steven Spencer

August 18, 2021

How about the ability to increment more than 1 for each order, whether 10 or 23 ?

Thanks!

Reply
- Mark
  
  August 19, 2021
  
  Hi Steven,
  
  Sorry to let you down, but we currently do not have this option available in the plugin. We will consider adding this an improvement in future releases.
  
  Reply
Joe Riviello

August 5, 2021

We have a site with order numbers that match the is numbers, which happen to be very long numbers( ie. 900076586635536884. This is do to an issue we had with our version control plugin recording the site changes. Does your plugin allow for us to set the order number starting point from today and in the future to something like 1001? The historical orders can remain with the long number.

Reply
- Mark
  
  August 16, 2021
  
  Hi Joe,
  
  Thanks for reaching out to Webtoffee! Using our plugin you can begin a sequence for all future orders and keep the existing order numbers for past orders.
  
  Reply
Adrian Smith

July 15, 2021

Hi
We just noticed that the sequential plugin had given up and we have received a few orders with the post_id assigned instead. Checking for updates I see that you have released a bugfix release for this and we have applied it. We have some questions:
1. How do we recover for the orders that did not get a sequential number?
2. Is it possible to apply a renumber process to a selection of orders – not all?
2. Will the next sequential number follow on from the last generated one or will it continue to use the post_id value?

Reply
Arpan

July 10, 2021

i didn’t quite understand the usage of woocommerce_order_tracking.
After using your plugin, order number got printed correctly in the generated invoice, but woo-sms plugin is not able to send sms with new order number. it continues to send sms with woo-commerce generated random order number.

Reply
- Mark
  
  July 13, 2021
  
  Hi Arpan,
  
  The might be some changes needed in the Woocommerce SMS plugin to make it compatible. Instead of referencing $order->id or $order->get_id() when fetching order data, that plugin should use $order->get_order_number() to make it compatible.
  
  Please contact their support and request to make this change.
  
  Reply
Sarah

March 16, 2021

What does tracking the orders do? Will the plugin work if I don’t enable this option?

Reply
- Mark
  
  March 16, 2021
  
  Hi Sarah,
  
  [woocommerce_order_tracking] is a shortcode provided by Woocommerce to link to the order based on order ID and you can use it in the front end of the site. You need to enable that option if you want to track the orders based on the sequential order numbers.
  
  It is not required to enable that option to use the plugin. It’s needed only if you are using that shortcode.
  
  Reply
  - Jeff
    
    October 25, 2021
    
    Sorry, but this is still confusing to me.
    Especially:
    “It is not required to enable that option to use the plugin. It’s needed only if you are using that shortcode.”
    To what option are you referring?
    Thx.
    
    Reply
    - Mike
      
      November 30, 2021
      
      Hi Jeff,
      
      If you use this [woocommerce_order_tracking] shortcode and have enabled the Track Orders option located on our plugin settings page, you can track orders based on the sequential order number.
      
      Reply

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Sequential Order Number for WooCommerce Plugin- User Guide

Overview of the plugin

Installation

Get started

Settings