This is a complete documentation of the free plugin Sequential order number for WooCommerce to help 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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Comments (49)
Eugenia Franzoni
May 31, 2022
Hi,
we would like to use the plugin together with the ShippyPro service, which uses Legacy APIs. Everything works with their service, except that the order IDs exported to them is the Post ID and not the Order ID
We are actually using the free plugin. Would the Pro plugin solve the issue?
thanks!
Shesna
June 1, 2022
Hi Eugenia,
Thanks for reaching out to us. We understand your requirement. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to do anything to get this resolved from our side alone. However, you may please check with the ShippyPro Plugin vendor about any hooks available to modify the data exported by the plugin.
gavin
March 25, 2022
I found that the order number I got from the third-party credit card payment plugin is still the original order number. How can I solve this problem? The plugin I used is [wintopay-for-woocommerce-V2.0.8]Looking forward to your reply!
Mark
April 12, 2022
Hi Gavin,
Greetings from Webtoffee!
In order to bring additional compatibility, code changes should be done within that plugin or they should be able to provide us with some action hooks. Kindly share us their support page link or contact so that we can check with them. You may also try contacting them directly.
Dev
February 25, 2022
The new order id doesn’t work on order tracking page. help me with this.
Mike
March 23, 2022
Hi Dev,
Thanks for reaching out to us.
Kindly share the WooCommerce system status report (WooCommerce>status>system status report) via this link for a better understanding of the issue.
Quinn Corkal
February 2, 2022
Thanks for the great plugin.
When we use the shortcode in Woocommerce emails {order_number}, it doesn’t take the new order number (we reset to zero). It takes the order number as if never installed your plugin (ex 3758).
Is there a way to fix this?
Thank you!
Mike
March 23, 2022
Hi Quinn,
Thanks for reaching out to us.
Kindly mention the email customizer plugin name that you are using. It will be nice if you could share the WooCommerce system status report (WooCommerce>status>system status report) via this link for a better understanding.
Punit Shah
January 28, 2022
Hi,
Any way to add compatibility with Sumo Affiliates Pro plugin?
Mike
February 1, 2022
Hi Punit,
Thanks for reaching out to us. Unfortunately, we haven’t tested the plugin with the Sumo Affiliates Pro plugin and we are not sure of the compatibility. Since it is a premium plugin, it will be nice if you could try using the free version of our plugin and see if it have any compatibility issues.
Punit Shah
January 26, 2022
Sumo Affiliates Pro plugin does not reflect the updated order number. Can it be fixed?
Mike
February 1, 2022
Hi Punit,
Thanks for reaching out to us. If you like to make any of your other plugins (invoice/payment/shipment) compatible with the Sequential Order Numbers for WooCommerce, please make the below tweak.
Instead of referencing
$order->idor$order->get_id()when fetching order data, use$order->get_order_number()Evan
January 25, 2022
I am just curious, I updated a shipping address on an order and the order ID updated. Is there a way to not have the order ID when we do changed to the order itself?
Mike
February 1, 2022
Hi Evan,
Thanks for reaching out to us. We were not able to replicate any such issues when we tested the same scenario on our end. If the issue persists kindly share the screenshots of the order edit page via this link.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Mike
September 27, 2021
Hi Alex,
Thanks for reaching out. Kindly raise a ticket here and share the details for debugging.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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?
Chloe
October 21, 2021
I have the same issue
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.
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.
Mark
September 1, 2021
Hi Johann,
Are you using any third-party plugins in the site or is it the default woocommerce emails?
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).
Mark
August 26, 2021
Hi Kat,
Kindly mention which PayPal plugin you are using in the site so that we can check for compatibility.
Steven Spencer
August 18, 2021
How about the ability to increment more than 1 for each order, whether 10 or 23 ?
Thanks!
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Sarah
March 16, 2021
What does tracking the orders do? Will the plugin work if I don’t enable this option?
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.
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.
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.