Orders and notifications
Where quotes and orders arrive, who gets told about them, and how to pass them to the systems you already run, with or without writing code.
This article explains where your quotes and orders arrive, how to choose who hears about them, and how to pass them on to the tools you already use. You can run your shop from e-mail alone, from the console, or through your own systems.
The simplest thing that works: e-mail
Set the shop’s address under Settings → Shop, in Order notifications go to. New orders and requests for quote are e-mailed there. Plenty of excellent shops run on a shared inbox, and Quotometry does not ask you to stop.
The Inbox
Everything is also in the console’s Inbox, which is usually the better place to work: the part, viewable; the configuration and version that priced it; the buyer and their history; and the state of the job. You can filter and search, and open anything by its number from the command palette.
Order statuses
An order moves through these statuses:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| New | The buyer placed the order. |
| In review | A person at the shop must confirm the price before it goes ahead. |
| Confirmed | The shop has accepted the order. |
| In production | The part is being made. |
| Shipped | The order has left the shop. |
| Completed | Done. |
| Cancelled | The order will not be made. |
Moving an order along e-mails the buyer in your name, from your own domain if you have set one up. Buyers chase far less when they can see where their job is.
Choose who gets told what
Notifications are chosen per person, under Settings → Team: new orders, requests for quote, new quotes, quota warnings, callback problems and a weekly summary. One person can hear about every quote while another hears only about orders. Set this up as soon as more than one person is involved: a shared address that everyone ignores is the usual failure.
The weekly summary
Next to the other notifications under Settings → Team is the weekly summary: one message on Monday morning with the week’s quote requests, quotes sent, orders and their value, and what is still waiting for somebody. It is off until you tick it, nobody is signed up for you, and it is not sent in a week when nothing happened.
That summary and the set-up e-mails we send a new shop are the only messages you can switch off, and each carries an unsubscribe link (your e-mail program’s own “unsubscribe” button works too). Unsubscribing changes nothing about your quotes, orders and billing: those messages arrive because something happened, not because we thought you might like to hear from us.
Send events to your own systems
Webhooks send a signed event to a URL you control, with scheduled retries and a delivery log you can replay from. If you have a developer, this is the right answer. See the webhooks guide.
If your endpoint stops answering
You do not have to watch the delivery log. We e-mail your notification address, and anyone who ticked Callback problems under Settings → Team, when a delivery gives up, when an endpoint has been failing for three days, when it is switched off after a week, and once a day about everything that did not arrive.
Nothing is lost while that is happening. Every order is in your Inbox and in your order e-mail whether the callback arrived or not. Once your end is answering again, replay a failed delivery from the endpoint’s log under Developers → Webhooks. Switching a disabled endpoint back on starts the count afresh.
Carts and payment
If you already sell through WooCommerce or Shopify, a configured part can become a line in that cart, so your existing payments, tax, shipping and accounting keep working and nothing is entered twice. The WordPress plugin and the Shopify app do that wiring for you.
Without a cart, the order is placed through Quotometry and you take payment your own way: the widget can show your payment instructions to the buyer and include them in their confirmation. Quotometry never holds your customers’ money.
Requests for quote
A part the engine cannot price automatically (an oversize job, a DFM problem you review, a quantity past your threshold) still arrives as a request with the geometry already measured and the file already viewable. You answer with a number instead of asking for the file again. See Manual review.
Next steps
- Manual review: answer the jobs that need a person, quickly.
- Webhooks: send events to your own systems.
- Troubleshooting: a customer says they never got the e-mail.