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A plain-English guide to every WooCommerce order status and what each one means for you and your customer.

WooCommerce uses statuses to track where each order is in its journey — from the moment a customer clicks "Place order" through to delivery. This guide explains every status so you always know what's happening.

Quick summary

The most common statuses you'll deal with are Processing (paid, needs fulfilling), Completed (done), and Refunded. Some status changes send an automatic email to your customer and some don't — the table below says which. You can change a status by hand at any time from the order detail page.

The full list of order statuses

Status	What it means	Customer email sent?
Draft	A temporary record the block checkout creates before the order is submitted	No
Pending payment	Order received but no payment made yet	No — the standard order emails are not triggered while an order is pending payment
Processing	Payment received and stock reduced — awaiting fulfillment	Yes — the "Processing order" email with their order details
On hold	Awaiting payment confirmation. Stock is reduced, but you have to confirm the payment	Yes — the "Order on-hold" email with their order details
Completed	Order fulfilled and finished	Yes — the "Completed order" email
Cancelled	Order cancelled by you or the customer	Only if you switch it on — the customer "Cancelled order" email is off by default. The store's own "Cancelled order" email goes to you, not the customer
Refunded	The order's full value has been refunded after payment	Yes — the "Refunded order" email (it has settings for full and partial refunds)
Failed	Payment failed or was declined	Yes — and you get a copy too

Draft orders only appear on the "Draft" sub-tab of the Orders screen, and WooCommerce runs a daily clean-up that deletes the ones that are no longer active. Trash is not a status in this list — it's where an order goes when you delete it.

Cancelling stops an order; it never issues a refund on its own. If the customer had already paid, you process the refund separately — and that is what records the order as Refunded.

Read this as text

An order starts as Pending payment — created, but payment not received yet. If the payment is confirmed it becomes Processing. If it is declined the order becomes Failed, and the customer typically needs to try again with a different card or payment method.

On hold sits alongside those as the other unpaid status: payment has been submitted but not confirmed, most often a direct bank transfer or a check that has not cleared. Once you confirm the money arrived, you change it to Processing yourself.

Processing is where your work happens: payment is confirmed and the order is waiting for you to fulfill it. Once you have, it becomes Completed.

Two statuses sit off that line, and they are the ones people mix up. Cancelled is reached from an order that was cancelled before payment, or from Processing when the order is stopped before fulfillment. Refunded is what WooCommerce records once you process a full refund — from Processing, from Completed, and from Cancelled too, because cancelling does not issue a refund on its own. If the customer had already paid, that refund is still yours to process separately.

Two things are not drawn here. Draft is the temporary record the block checkout creates before an order is submitted, and WooCommerce deletes the inactive ones daily. Trash is where a deleted order goes, not a step in the life of an order. WooCommerce will also let you set any status by hand from the order page — these are the routes orders normally travel, not a list of the only changes the software allows.

What each status means in practice

Pending payment

The order has been received, but no payment has been made. These orders are generally waiting on the customer: they reached the external payment page and abandoned it, or their card transaction was declined. The exact behavior varies depending on the payment gateway, so a declined card does not always land here.

Orders stay in Pending payment until the payment gateway confirms the charge, or until you update the status yourself. If you have set Hold stock (minutes) in your inventory settings, WooCommerce automatically cancels eligible pending orders once that time is up and releases the stock they were holding.

The standard order emails are not triggered while an order sits in Pending payment. If a customer needs a nudge, you can send them a payment link yourself: open the order and choose Send order details to customer from the Order actions dropdown.

Processing

This is the main working status. It means:

Payment was received and stock has been reduced.
The order is waiting for you to pack and ship it.
You need to take action on this order.

Most of your day-to-day order management happens here. Every order goes through Processing except orders where every product is both virtual and downloadable — those skip straight to Completed.

On hold

The order is waiting for payment to be confirmed. Stock has already been reduced, but you have to confirm the money arrived. This is where offline payment methods land:

Direct bank transfer (BACS) — the customer has to send the payment from their bank, and you check your account for it.
Check payments — awaiting receipt and clearance.

You may also see On hold with a delayed-notification method such as SEPA Direct Debit, or with a gateway set to authorize now and capture later. In those cases the order can move on by itself once the payment clears — check the order notes and your gateway's documentation.

Once you confirm the money is in your account, change the status to Processing yourself.

Completed

The order is finished. You've shipped the goods (or the customer has downloaded their digital files). No further action is needed. WooCommerce sends the customer a completion email.

Cancelled

The order was cancelled, either by you or by the customer. Stock for the items on the order goes back into your inventory if stock management is enabled. Cancelled orders are not deleted — they stay in your records.

Cancellation does not refund automatically

Changing an order to "Cancelled" does not automatically issue a refund if the customer already paid. You need to process the refund separately. See the guide on refunding an order.

Refunded

The order's full value has been refunded after payment. WooCommerce records this status once you process a full refund through the order page. Partial refunds keep the order in its previous status, and the customer's email refers to a partial refund.

One thing to watch: if you use the manual refund option, the order can reach Refunded without any money actually going back to the customer. Use it only when you have already sent the money some other way.

Failed

The customer's payment failed or was declined, and no payment has gone through. If stock had already been reduced for the order, WooCommerce puts it back into inventory. The customer typically needs to try again with a different card or payment method.

With delayed-notification payment methods, an order can sit in On hold while the payment is checked and only move to Failed afterwards, so this status does not always appear straight away.

How to change an order's status

Open the order. Go to WooCommerce → Orders and click the order number.

Find the Status dropdown. It's in the main order panel at the top of the page — the one holding the order date, the customer, and the billing and shipping addresses.

Choose the new status from the dropdown.

Click Update in the Order actions panel to save. WooCommerce may send an email to the customer depending on the status you chose.

Common questions

Can I create custom order statuses?

Not out of the box — WooCommerce gives you the statuses listed above. Extensions exist that add custom statuses (for example, "Awaiting pickup" or "In production"). Ask us if you need this and we'll find one that fits.

Why is my order still showing as Pending even though the customer paid?

This can happen if the payment gateway didn't send its confirmation back to your site. Check your gateway's own dashboard to see whether the payment was taken. If it was, follow your gateway's guidance for checking or re-sending its webhook or callback, reconcile the order, and then update it to Processing before you fulfill it. We can help with this.

Does changing to Cancelled restock the items?

Yes, as long as stock management is enabled. When an order moves to Cancelled, the stock for its items goes back into your inventory automatically. (The tick-box that asks whether to restock is part of the refund screen, not cancelling.)

What's the difference between Refunded and Cancelled?

Cancelled means the order was stopped. Refunded means the order's full value was paid and then given back. They are not alternatives: an order that was already paid for can be cancelled and still need refunding, and that refund is a separate step. Use Cancelled for orders that aren't going ahead; use the refund process for any order where money was actually taken.

Need a hand?

If you're stuck, email support@chykalophia.com and we'll help. Include your website address and a screenshot if you can.

Order statuses explained