This guide shows you how to handle an order from the dashboard when it does not come through your store on its own. You will create a personalized order by hand, print a packing slip, resend the confirmation email, and cancel or refund an order while keeping Shopify in sync. It is for merchants who already have a product set up and want to manage orders directly.
Create an order by hand
Sometimes an order does not arrive through checkout. A customer emails you their design, you need a replacement for a damaged item, or you want a render-only test before going live. For these, you build the order yourself.
Open Orders in the dashboard. The Create order button sits in the top right of the page.
Open the order builder
Go to Orders, then click Create order. This opens the manual order builder.
Pick a product
Choose the product you want to order. You can only pick a product that already exists in Composerie, so set it up first if it is not there yet.
Compose the design
Build the design the customer wants. Enter the text, pick the photo, and choose the variant. This is the same personalization a shopper does in the customizer, done by you on their behalf. To see what that looks like from the shopper side, read how a shopper personalizes a product.
Add shipping and order details
Set the ship-to address. The name, address line, city, country, and postal code are all required before you can submit. You can also pick an order type and add internal notes that only your team sees.
Create the order
Review the summary on the right, then create the order. Composerie checks that the product belongs to your workspace and creates the order. Depending on the order type, product mapping, and fulfillment settings, the order can then enter the configured render and handoff workflow. Follow the recorded render and provider states instead of assuming creation means production was accepted.
Packing slip and resending the confirmation
Open any order from the Orders list to reach the order detail page. The header has a More button. Two of its actions help you communicate the order: printing a packing slip and resending the confirmation email.
Open the More menu
On the order detail page, click the More button in the header. The menu lists Resend confirmation and Print packing slip, along with the cancel and refund actions.
Print a packing slip
Click Print packing slip. It opens in a new browser tab and triggers the print dialog for you. Print it, or save it as a PDF, and drop it in the box with the order.
Resend the confirmation email
Click Resend confirmation to send the Composerie order confirmation again. This is the email that thanks the customer and lists what they ordered. Each personalized line in the email carries an Edit your design link, so the customer can reopen their design from the message.
Cancel or refund an order
Cancelling and refunding both live in the More menu, below the packing slip and resend actions. Which one you see depends on the order’s current status.
- Refund appears unless the order is already refunded, already cancelled, or still pending.
- Cancel appears unless the order is already cancelled, already refunded, or already delivered.
So a delivered order can be refunded but not cancelled, and a pending order can be cancelled but not yet refunded. For what each status means, read order statuses explained.
Open the More menu
On the order detail page, click More in the header. Refund and Cancel sit near the bottom of the menu.
Confirm the action
Pick Refund or Cancel. A confirmation dialog opens before anything happens, so you can back out if you clicked the wrong one. Confirm to go ahead.
Let Shopify and the dashboard sync
If the order came from Shopify, cancelling cancels it in Shopify first, then flips the status in your dashboard. This order matters: the dashboard never shows an order as cancelled while the original order is still open in your store. The two stay in agreement.
Cancelling or refunding records that the order should not enter a new local fulfillment attempt. It does not prove that a provider stopped work it had already accepted. Check the provider dashboard for an existing order or production charge and contact the provider when work is already in flight.
You can also keep working an order from its detail page in other ways: edit the ship-to address, add internal notes for your team, and manage the order’s tags. These all save to the order without touching its fulfillment.
Does a manual order use the same workflow as a store order?
It can use the configured render and provider-handoff workflow when the order type, mapping, and settings are eligible. A test order is render-only. Verify the resulting render and provider states on the order.
What is the difference between cancel and refund?
Cancel records that the order should stop; refund returns money. Neither action proves that provider work already in flight has stopped. Cancel is hidden once an order is delivered, and refund is hidden while an order is still pending.
Will a cancelled order still reach my print provider?
Cancellation requests may fail after production starts; confirm provider status and charges.
Why can I refund this order but not cancel it?
The order is probably already delivered. Delivered orders can be refunded but not cancelled. The available actions follow the order status.
Next
To follow what happens after an order ships and how the tracking reaches your customer, read shipping and tracking.