The ecommerce manager workflow in SGEN

How to run your store day-to-day — orders, products, coupons, and when to call for help

The ecommerce manager workflow in SGEN is not about configuring the store — that belongs to the site owner. Your job is to keep orders moving, keep the catalog current, and keep promotions working for shoppers. Three panels carry almost all of that work: Orders, Products, and Coupons. This guide shows you what to do in each panel, in what order, and how often — plus the four situations where you stop and call someone else.

an admin is the ecommerce manager for your business (yourdomain.com). She opens SGEN most mornings to a short list of tasks. The cadence below is built from her workflow — adapt the timing to your store volume.

What is this for?

This guide covers the daily order-management rhythm for an ecommerce manager who owns fulfillment, catalog hygiene, and coupon launches on a SGEN store. It does not cover store setup — payment gateways, shipping zones, and tax rules belong to the site owner and live under Ecommerce → Configuration.

Use this guide when you are:

• New to the role and want a repeatable daily routine.
• Handing the role to someone else and need a written runbook.
• Troubleshooting a gap in your current process: orders slipping, catalog drift, or coupon complaints.

The three panels map to three time horizons:

Good use cases

Example 1: Margaret's morning check — 15 minutes. Margaret opens Store Management → Orders at 08:00. The default 5-day window is already set — no date change needed for a morning check. She reads the status tab row: All Orders 12 • Completed 7 • Shipped 2 • Pending Online Payment 1 • Refunded 1 • Failed 0. Seven completed is healthy for a Tuesday — yesterday's "your detailed content piece is live" email drove a clean spike. The one Pending Online Payment (a developer, your detailed content piece, $9.00, 3 days ago) is stale: if payment has not cleared by end of day she will cancel it. The Refunded order (Canvas Tote Bag, $30.00) is already resolved. She marks the two Completed orders she packed last night as Shipped, then closes the tab. Total: 12 minutes.

Example 2: Handling a damage complaint — end-to-end. a teammate emails: her Classic Logo Tee arrived with a printing defect. Margaret searches "Hopper" in the Orders search box. Order #1011 appears: Classic Logo Tee + Brand Sticker Set, $29.00, Shipped. She clicks #1011 to open the order detail page. She sees the full billing address, both line items, and the Stripe payment. She clicks Click here to refund, enters qty 1 for the Classic Logo Tee and amount $24.99, ticks Restock item, adds the note "a teammate — Classic Logo Tee printing defect, partial refund $24.99, restock 1 unit," and clicks Refund Order. The order status updates automatically. Grace's account page reflects the refund on her next visit. No developer involvement needed.

Example 3: Weekly coupon performance check. Margaret opens Store Management → Coupons on Monday. She sees 4 Published codes: WELCOME15, FREESHIP50, VIP25, BLACKFRIDAY25. She checks the Orders list (filtered to the last 7 days) and notices BLACKFRIDAY25 appears on 3 orders — but Black Friday was 6 months ago, meaning someone shared the code post-campaign. She opens BLACKFRIDAY25, sets Status to Draft, saves. The code stops working immediately on the next cart load. She adds a description note: "Retired 2026-05-05 — code was still circulating post-campaign." No orders are retroactively changed.

What NOT to use this for

• Do not use this guide to set up payment gateways, shipping zones, or tax rules.

Those are configuration tasks for the site owner, documented under Ecommerce → Configuration.

• Do not issue refunds from the Orders list view.

Refunds are per-order only — click the order number to open the detail page and use the refund form there. (Source: ecommerce-orders/01 — "What NOT to use this for.")

• Do not use coupons to discount a specific product.

Every coupon applies to the entire cart subtotal, not to a line item or category. (Source: ecommerce-coupons/01 — "What NOT to use this for.")

• Do not use percentage-discount coupons.

Stick to Fixed cart discount — the percentage path has a known issue. (Source: ecommerce-coupons/01.)

• Do not set a coupon expiry date in the form.

The expiry date field has a known issue. To end a campaign, flip the coupon Status to Draft instead. (Source: ecommerce-coupons/01.)

How this connects to other features

• Ecommerce → Orders — the order list is the primary fulfillment surface.

Bulk status transitions (Completed → Shipped) happen here. Each status change writes an automatic audit note on the order detail page.

• Ecommerce → Products — the Products list shows your full catalog.

Each row exposes Quick Edit for title / slug / status / sort without opening the full product page. Product names in the Orders list link directly to each product's edit page.

• Ecommerce → Coupons — Published coupons become live immediately on the public cart.

The Enable coupons on cart toggle in Ecommerce → Configuration → Purchase Flow controls whether the coupon field appears at all.

• Ecommerce → Configuration — currency, tax label, and shipping line on each order come from Configuration.

If the Total column shows the wrong currency, the fix is in Configuration, not in Orders.

• Your customer's account page — every order status change you make here reflects on the customer's My Account → Orders page immediately.

Mark Shipped before you email customers so their account already matches your message.

Before you start

• You are signed in to SGEN as an Administrator or Store Manager.
• At least one product is Published in your catalog.
• Your store currency, tax, and shipping are configured under Ecommerce → Configuration — that is the site owner's setup territory, not yours to change.
• The Enable coupons on cart toggle is on under Ecommerce → Configuration → Purchase Flow if you plan to run coupon campaigns.

Where to go

All three panels live under the same top-level nav group:

1. Open the left navigation in your SGEN admin.
2. Click Store Management to expand the group.
3. Click Orders for the orders list, Products for the catalog, or Coupons for discount codes.

Direct paths:

• Orders: /sg-admin/ecommerce/orders
• Products: /sg-admin/ecommerce/products
• Coupons: /sg-admin/ecommerce/coupons

Steps

The steps below follow the four-cadence rhythm: morning, daily, weekly, monthly. Run each group in order — do not skip the morning check before the daily tasks.

1. Morning — read the status tab counts

Open Store Management → Orders. The default 5-day window is already set — no date change needed for a morning check. Read the tab row across the top: All Orders, Completed, Pending Online Payment, Awaiting Payment, Shipped, Cancelled, Failed, Refunded, Trash.

A healthy morning tab row for a small store looks like this:

Flag these signals immediately:

• Failed > 0 — see Escalation paths below. One Failed order can be a fluke; two or more from different customers on the same day is a payment gateway signal worth escalating.
• Pending Online Payment older than 48 hours — the customer started checkout but did not complete payment. Cancel it to keep your active view clean.
• Refunded you do not recognize — click into the order detail and read the note before taking any action.

2. Morning — mark packed orders as Shipped

If you packed any orders since your last session, mark them before doing anything else.

1. Click the Completed tab.
2. Tick every order you have packed and boxed.
3. Pick Mark as Shipped from the Action For Selected dropdown.
4. Click Apply.

The list reloads on the Shipped tab with your orders updated. Each customer's account page flips to Shipped on their next visit. Each changed order gets a system-generated note on its detail page recording the transition — your audit trail is automatic.

3. Morning — cancel stale Pending Online Payment orders

Any Pending Online Payment order sitting there for 48+ hours almost certainly will not clear.

1. Click the Pending Online Payment tab.
2. Scan the Order At column for any order showing "3 days ago" or older.
3. Tick those rows.
4. Pick Mark as Cancelled from the dropdown and click Apply.

If the customer contacts you afterward, they can re-order. The order detail page keeps a full record of the cancelled order for your reference.

4. Daily — process the refund queue

Open the Refunded tab and check that every Refunded order has a note on its detail page.

For each Refunded order: click the order number and read the detail page. If you see a Refunded order with no note — meaning you do not know who issued the refund or why — add a note for your records before closing. Refunds issued correctly via the order detail page (Click here to refund button) automatically flip the order status to Refunded. If you see an order still in Completed after a customer reported receiving a refund, something went wrong — reopen the order and issue the refund from the detail page.

5. Daily — scan the product catalog for anomalies

Open Store Management → Products and scan the status tab row. For a small catalog (four products), this takes under 5 minutes:

Check for:

• Any product that moved to Draft unexpectedly — the Published count should match your intended live catalog.
• A product that has been in Draft for more than two weeks with no scheduled publish date — either launch it or Trash it to keep the list readable.
• A price that looks wrong — hover the row and click Quick Edit to correct the title or slug in-place without opening the full edit page.

6. Weekly — audit active coupons

Open Store Management → Coupons and read the status tabs:

For each Published coupon, open it and ask three questions:

1. Is this campaign still running? If not, flip Status to Draft and save.
2. Has the description note aged past the planned end date? If so, flip to Draft.
3. Is the Usage limit per coupon close to its cap? If so, plan a replacement code before the cap is hit.

Coupons you no longer need should be set to Draft, not Trash — you may want to re-run the campaign under the same code next season. Trash is for codes you will never reuse.

After the weekly coupon audit, cross-reference the Orders list (filtered to the last 7 days) and check which coupon codes appear as strike-through prices in the Total column. A code that drove zero orders this week despite being Published may not be reaching customers — check your campaign channel (email, social, pop-up) before assuming the coupon itself is broken.

Weekly top-seller scan at your business (example, drawn from Orders filtered to the last 7 days):

Canvas Tote Bag — 6 orders (top seller, WELCOME15 applied on 3)Classic Logo Tee — 4 orders (all at full price)your detailed content piece — 3 orders (digital, high margin, zero shipping cost)Brand Sticker Set — 2 orders (add-on item, often bundled with Tote Bag)

If a product disappears from the weekly list entirely for two consecutive weeks, open its edit page and check: Is it still Published? Is the price set? Is stock management enabled and showing zero?

7. Weekly — move slow products to Draft

In the Products list, if a product has had zero orders for 4+ consecutive weeks and you have no upcoming promotion for it, move it to Draft to keep the catalog tight.

1. Tick the product's checkbox.
2. Pick Move to Draft from the Action For Selected dropdown.
3. Click Apply.

The product disappears from /products on your public site immediately. All its data — images, description, variants, reviews — are preserved. Moving it back to Published takes one click: tick it in the Draft tab, pick Move to Publish, click Apply.

8. Monthly — pricing audit and supplier reorder

Once a month, block 30-45 minutes for a deeper pass.

Pricing audit: Open every product's edit page and compare the current price against your cost of goods. If a product's margin has compressed — supplier price went up, store price stayed flat — flag it to the site owner for a price-change decision. Price changes on the product edit page are a site-owner action; your job is to surface the data, not to change the price unilaterally.

Abandoned cart review: Widen the Orders date picker to the last 30 days and count Pending Online Payment orders older than 7 days. Five or more stale pending orders from different customers in a 30-day window is a payment gateway escalation signal — see Escalation paths below.

Supplier reorder: Cross-reference your weekly performance notes against current stock levels. For each physical product below your reorder threshold, initiate a supplier order outside of SGEN. SGEN does not auto-deduct stock unless stock management is enabled per product — confirm with your site owner whether that setting is active.

Escalation paths — when to stop and call someone

Most day-to-day issues resolve inside your three panels. Four situations require you to stop and loop in someone else.

Call your developer when:

• Payment failure pattern. More than two Failed orders from different customers in a single day, or the same customer's orders failing repeatedly across different payment attempts. This signals a gateway misconfiguration or an expired API key — not something you can resolve in your admin panels. Send your developer the order numbers, the payment method (Stripe / PayPal), and a screenshot of the Failed tab.
• Theme or checkout layout issue. A customer reports the cart page looks broken — fields out of place, the coupon box missing, a button not responding. The layout is controlled by the site theme and SGEN Builder, not by your ecommerce panels. Screenshot the broken cart and send the developer both the screenshot and the affected order or session description.

Call your site owner when:

• Pricing strategy or new product launch. Decisions about what price to set, whether to launch a new product line, and how to structure variants belong to the site owner. You can surface the data — week-over-week sales, which variant sells fastest — but the decision and the product-edit save are the site owner's call.
• Coupon promotion design. The design of a new campaign — what the code should be, what dollar amount, which segment, which channel carries the code — should be approved by your marketing manager or site owner before you create anything in SGEN. Once the parameters are agreed, you create the coupon. The form takes two minutes; the campaign strategy takes a conversation.

What success looks like

• Every morning you can read the order count, status breakdown, and any anomalies in under 5 minutes without opening a single order detail page.
• Packed orders are marked Shipped the same day they ship — customers see the updated status on their account page by end of day.
• Stale Pending Online Payment orders (48+ hours old) are cancelled promptly so the active view stays clean.
• Your coupon list has no Published codes from campaigns that ended more than 30 days ago.
• Your product catalog has no Draft products that should be Published, and no Published products with stale pricing.
• When an issue lands outside your panels — payment failure, layout break, pricing decision — you escalate quickly and include the order number or screenshot.

What to do if it does not work

• Orders list shows "No orders were found!" in red.

The current date window contains no orders. Widen the date-range picker and click Select Dates. If your store is brand new, the list stays empty until a customer completes checkout — that is normal.

• A coupon code is rejected at cart with "Coupon code does not exist."

Check three things in order: (1) is the coupon set to Publish? (2) has this customer already hit the Usage limit per user? (3) does the coupon have an Allowed user restriction and is the customer signed in? If all three are clear and the code still fails, contact support.

• A bulk action on orders reports nothing changed.

Make sure at least one row is ticked. Orders already in the target status are skipped silently — if all Completed orders are already Shipped, applying Mark as Shipped does nothing and the count does not move.

• A product I moved to Draft is still showing on the public site.

Clear your browser cache and reload /products. The change takes effect immediately server-side; a stale cache can show the old page for a few seconds.

• The coupon box is not visible on the cart.

Check Ecommerce → Configuration → Purchase Flow and confirm the Enable coupons on cart toggle is on. If that toggle is off, customers see no coupon field regardless of how many Published coupons you have.

• I cannot find an order a customer mentioned.

Widen the date picker to the last 30 days before searching. The default 5-day window hides older orders. Search by the customer's last name — the search matches against order number, customer email, display name, product name, and billing address fields.

Tips

• Read the status tabs before opening any order. The tab counts are your fastest signal. If Shipped shows 0 when you expected 5, something is worth investigating before you click into individual orders.
• Widen the date range before you search. If a customer says they ordered "a month ago," set the date picker to 30 days first, then type their name in the search box.
• Use the Products link in Orders as a shortcut. Clicking a product name in the Orders Products column opens that product's edit page directly — faster than navigating back through the menu.
• Draft a coupon before your campaign date. Create the code as Draft, confirm the settings, then flip to Published on campaign day. This avoids a live code with a typo in it.
• One coupon per cart. Shoppers cannot stack two codes. If a customer asks why their second code is not working, that is expected behavior.
• The Orders export is your bookkeeping safety net. Click Export Orders (top-right of the Orders list), pick a date window, and download the CSV. Each row is one order with customer name, email, total, payment method, status, and timestamp. Run this monthly and archive it.
• Bulk actions respect the active tab. If you are on the Completed tab and tick rows, you only act on Completed orders. Switch to All Orders to act across statuses in one pass.
• Mark Shipped before emailing customers. The moment you apply the bulk action, each customer's account page reflects the new status. Update the status first so their account already matches your message.

Day-one and first-week path

Use this table on your first day to confirm access and build context before the queue fills up.

Other roles on this site

Each role on a SGEN site has its own onboarding guide. The table below shows the teammates you will escalate to most often.

Related reading

• View and manage your orders — the full reference for the Orders list: all nine status tabs, eight bulk actions, search, date-range filtering, and the export flow.
• Manage every product in your store — the full reference for the Products list: quick-edit, duplicate, trash, restore, and per-product URL patterns.
• Create a discount coupon — the full reference for the Coupons panel: nine-field form, Fixed cart discount, usage limits, allowed users, and campaign patterns.