Inventory Management Orders & Updating Status

Audiogon is unique in that users do not simply add a listing to their cart and pay, and Dealers are allowed to offer Direct Sale (off-site) payment options. Understanding this process is essential to Inventory Management.

How Audiogon Handles Orders

On Audiogon, users must first commit to buy an item, and are then taken to their cart to pay.

Once a buyer clicks "Buy It Now," they are taken to a confirm purchase page.

Once they confirm, the listing is added to their cart, and we create an order notification with the status of `open`.

The buyer is taken to the checkout page with the Payment Methods the seller has offered.

Once the buyer completes payment, we would update the existing new order with a status of `paid`. While most buyers pay immediately, there may be a delay between these two actions. As such, you should have a process in place to address `open` orders after a certain period of time—usually just reaching out to the buyer on the order page is enough of a reminder, but you are given their contact information to address them via phone or email.

Updating Order Status

There may be instances where you need to update the status of an order. This usually occurs when Dealers offer Direct Sale options where we cannot verify payment actually occurred.

Direct Sale Methods

While we encourage Dealers to offer payment methods that allow the buyer to check out immediately on Audiogon and pay directly, we understand that Direct Sale may be advantageous.

Examples below:

1. You send the buyer a custom cart link to check out on your ecommerce site.
2. You take a credit card over the phone
3. You set up an off-site ACH Payment to reduce processing fees—though if you do that you should really use AgonPay™.

Direct Sale Checkout Workflow

In these situations, we rely on the seller to confirm to us that the buyer has paid. When Direct Sale methods are enabled for a listing, the buyer "checks out" on Audiogon by "Paying Now".

And then indicating how they have paid on their side.

The buyer marking that they have paid does nothing other than alert the seller that the buyer has sent funds via the method they selected. We do not update the order status until the seller verifies payment and marks the order as paid.

This is usually done on the order page manually. In the screenshot below you can see that the buyer indicated they sent a Wire Transfer. Once verified, the seller would click "Mark Order as Paid" and the order would be complete.

Updating Order Status Via Inventory Management

With Inventory Management you are relying on automation. You can mark an order as paid through our Trackings API via Shipping Notifications feature. 

For API: Add complete=true to the parameters if you want to complete the order.

For FTP: Add a column to your CSV called `complete` with a value of `true`

For ShipStation: Mark the order as paid within ShipStation.