Run your first week

The first week is where habits form. A store that is checked at the same time every day, with every order moved to the right status, feels effortless by week three. One that is checked whenever a notification pings never does.

The daily routine

1. 1Open Orders → Needs action. Everything Pending or Confirmed is waiting on you.
2. 2For each new order, check the payment block. Online orders arrive already marked paid. For UPI/bank-transfer and COD orders, you collect the money yourself; when a UPI transfer lands, add a comment on the order so the timeline shows it, and send the invoice PDF over WhatsApp if the customer needs your details.
3. 3Confirm what you can ship. Pack it, book the courier (by hand, or from the Shiprocket panel in the order), and Mark shipped with the tracking link and a one-line note — Shipped via Delhivery, 3–5 days. The customer sees it on their Track Order page.
4. 4Move yesterday's parcels to Out for delivery and Mark delivered as the tracking updates, or let Shiprocket do it for you.
5. 5Reply to Messages. Every unanswered question on day one is a lost order on day two.

All the buttons are in How to fulfil an order. You get an email for every new order, and on your phone the dashboard works as it does on a laptop.

The four things that go wrong, and what to do

• An online payment shows pending. Very occasionally the gateway confirms a payment after the customer has left. Wait a few minutes; if the customer shows you a successful payment, click Mark as paid on that order. Abandoned payments cancel themselves.
• A COD order looks fake. Same name twice, a nonsense address, ten orders in a minute. Confirm by WhatsApp before you ship. You can block a phone number or email from ordering, straight from the order, and cap how many orders one person can place — see Stop fake and spam orders.
• You run out. If you track stock, a product at zero shows sold out and cannot be bought — no overselling. If you do not track stock, take the product off sale from the Products tab before the next order, not after.
• You cannot keep up. A festival rush, a family week, a stock count. Pause ordering under Settings lets shoppers browse while a message of yours explains that orders reopen on a date — see Pause ordering. Better than silently shipping late.

At the end of the week

Total the week: orders, money in, what the couriers actually charged, what came back. Update the pricing sheet. Note which product sold most and which question every customer asked; the answer goes on the product page this weekend. Then read Get your first 100 orders — that is the next course, and it starts exactly here.