Standing Orders (Recurring Orders)

Standing orders let you set up a recurring order for a customer once and have B2B Wave create it automatically on the days you choose, every week or every few weeks. Each standing order holds the customer’s products and quantities, delivery address, shipping option, and schedule. You manage standing orders from your Admin Panel, and you can also let customers set up their own from your storefront.

NOTE: Standing orders are not enabled on new accounts. Contact our support team to turn them on.

Enabling Standing Orders

Step 1. Contact our support team to enable standing orders for your account.

Step 2. Once enabled, the Standing Orders menu appears on your Admin Panel, below Customers.

Step 3. Go to Settings >Profile, open the “Application configuration” tab, and review the options in the “Standing Orders” section. Then, click “Save.”

NOTE: In the Admin Panel, a new standing order starts with the “Schedule By” and “Order Created Status” values of the standing order you created most recently. The defaults above are used when you don’t have one yet, and every time a customer saves a standing order from your storefront.

Scheduling by delivery date uses delivery date rules, which our support team also enables. Once they’re enabled, you set them up under Settings >Delivery Date Rules, and each customer uses the rule selected on their page or your default rule.

Creating a Standing Order

Step 1. Go to the Standing Orders menu and click “+Standing Order.”

Step 2. Under “Customer & Address,” search for the customer, then choose an address and a shipping option.

Step 3. Fill in the template name, status, and order created status.

Step 4. Under “Schedule Rules,” set the interval, choose how to schedule, click the days you want, and pick a start date.

Step 5. Under “Products,” click “Add Product,” search for a product, and enter its quantity. Repeat for each product.

Step 6. Optionally, click “Show creation plan for the next 8 orders” to check when orders will be created.

Step 7. Click “Save.”

Understanding the Standing Order Fields

Checking the Order Creation Plan

Click “Show creation plan for the next 8 orders” to see the next eight order dates and the delivery date each order will get, or “-” when there’s none. Select a customer and at least one day first.

NOTE: The creation plan doesn’t take the end date into account, so it can list dates after it. No orders are created after the end date.

Exploring Other Ways to Create a Standing Order

Duplicating a standing order. In the Standing Orders menu, click the copy icon (“Duplicate”) next to a standing order. The new one keeps the name (with “(Copy)” added), status, order created status, schedule, admin notes, and products. You then choose the customer, address, and shipping option. 

Starting from an existing order. Open an order from the Orders menu and click “Create standing order from order.” The form opens with the order’s customer, address, shipping option, products, and quantities, named “From Order #” followed by the order ID, starting today and scheduled by order date. Select the days and check the other fields before you save. This button appears once you have at least one standing order, and it doesn’t appear on orders that a standing order created.

NOTE: Standing orders keep products but not product variants. If you pick a variant when searching, or start from an order that contains variants, the orders are created with the product and no variant selected.

Duplicating is the quickest way to set up the same products and schedule for several customers.

How Standing Orders Work

B2B Wave checks your active standing orders every hour, using the time zone set under Settings >Profile on the “Basic Info” tab. Each standing order creates at most one order per order day (Order Date) or per delivery date (Delivery Date).

Scheduling by Order Date

An order is created on each selected day, at the first check after midnight. If the customer has a delivery date rule, the order’s “Delivery date” is set to the earliest date that rule allows. Otherwise, the order has no delivery date.

Scheduling by Delivery Date

For each selected delivery day, B2B Wave works out the last day the customer could order and still get that delivery, based on the cut-off times in the customer’s delivery date rule. The order is created one day before that, shortly after midnight, and its “Delivery date” is set to the selected day. For example, if the cut-off for Thursday delivery is Tuesday at 2:30 p.m., the order is created on Monday. If you save the standing order after that point but before the cut-off, the order is created at the next check.

Interval, Start Date, and End Date

Weeks run Monday to Sunday. With an interval of more than 1, weeks are counted from the week of the first selected day on or after the start date. For example, with an interval of 2, a Wednesday start date, and Monday and Thursday selected, the first order is created on that Thursday, then on Monday and Thursday every other week. The start and end dates are included in the schedule.

What the Created Order Contains

• The customer, address, and shipping option from the standing order.
• Each product and quantity, priced with the customer’s prices at the moment the order is created.
• The status from “Order Created Status” and the delivery date described above.
• No payment option. Orders are created directly rather than through checkout.

On the order’s page, a “Created from Standing Order #” button links back to the standing order. In the Standing Orders menu, the “Last Used” column shows the most recent order and its date.

Unsubmitted and Submitted Orders

With “Unsubmitted,” the order is saved for later on the customer’s account. Customers find it with their other unsubmitted orders, so make sure “Allow customers to save orders for later (multiple unsubmitted orders)” is enabled. On your Admin Panel, these orders have the “Temporary” status. No order email is sent. See Unsubmitted Orders.

With any other status, the order is placed with that status, and the same new order emails are sent as when an order is submitted. See Order Statuses.

When an Order Isn’t Created

B2B Wave never creates a partial order. If any product on the standing order can’t be added (for example, there isn’t enough stock and the product can’t be backordered, or the quantity isn’t a multiple of the product’s box quantity), no order is created. B2B Wave tries again at each hourly check for the rest of that day (Order Date) or until the cut-off (Delivery Date). You aren’t notified when this happens, so check the “Last Used” column if an order seems to be missing. Minimum quantities aren’t checked when the order is created.

NOTE: If you delete an order that a standing order created, it’s created again at the next hourly check, as long as the same day (Order Date) or the same ordering window (Delivery Date) hasn’t passed. To skip a single delivery, set the standing order to “Paused” first, then set it back to “Active” once that day has passed.

Remember that if you save an active standing order scheduled by order date with today as the start date, and today is one of the selected days, the first order is created within the hour.

Creating and Editing Standing Orders From Your Storefront

Customers allowed under “Allow customers to create standing orders” manage their standing orders on the “Standing Orders” page of your storefront, at your storefront address followed by /standing_orders. Customers without access can’t open the page, including to see standing orders you created for them.

The page lists each standing order’s name, status, days, and the date it was last used, with “Edit,” “Copy,” and “Delete” buttons. Customers click “New Standing Order” to create one.

The storefront form has the same fields as the Admin Panel, except:

• The standing order is always for the customer’s own account.
• Customers don’t choose “Schedule By” or “Order Created Status.” Your defaults are used, and they’re applied again every time a customer saves, even if you set different values on that standing order in the Admin Panel.
• Customers don’t see “Admin Notes” or the order creation plan.
• The earliest start date is tomorrow (Order Date) or the first available delivery date (Delivery Date).
• Saving checks each product’s minimum quantity and box quantity for that customer. See more about this in Customer-Specific Minimum and Box Quantities.

NOTE: On the storefront, customers can select any delivery day, including days their delivery date rule doesn’t deliver on. No orders are created for those days.

Parent customers also see their sub-customers’ standing orders.

NOTE: If a parent customer edits and saves a sub-customer’s standing order, the standing order moves to the parent customer’s account.

When a customer saves a standing order, they receive a “Standing Order # saved” email with the schedule, products, and a link to the standing order. You receive a “Standing Order # saved” email with the customer’s company name, sent to the “Email” on the “Basic Info” tab of Settings >Profile and to the addresses under “Bcc outgoing emails to customers” on the “Email notifications” tab. Saving a standing order from the Admin Panel doesn’t send any email.

Pausing, Stopping, and Deleting Standing Orders

To stop a standing order, set its “Status” to “Paused” or “Inactive” and click “Save.” Set it back to “Active” to resume. To remove it, click the delete icon next to it in the Standing Orders menu. Orders that were already created aren’t affected.

NOTE: If standing orders are turned off for your account, the Standing Orders menu and the storefront page disappear, but active standing orders keep creating orders. Set them to “Paused” or “Inactive” before you ask our support team to turn the feature off.

Troubleshooting Error Messages

NOTE: If standing orders don’t create orders as expected, contact our support team.