Draft order processing design problems

[bryanro]

Our order process starts with a Draft order for our custom/net-terms orders. Shopify has never had a smooth order workflow for Draft orders. We create manual custom orders and send invoice emails to receive payment by check or ACH. 

Here are a few design issues that need to be corrected to improve the workflow for order processing:

Order numbers should not change when a Draft order is converted to a Completed/Pending order. 

- We can not use the invoice feature in Draft orders because we do not want the customer to see 2 different order numbers for the "same order". 

- The work "Draft" or similar designation should be appended to the order number.

There should not be 2 separate ways to send an invoice for the "same order" (Draft and Completed).

- You can send an invoice for a Draft order, but when the customer pays, they will receive a confirmation email with an invoice number that doesn't match the Draft order that was just paid.

- You can also send an invoice from a Pending order, which is what we do for custom and net-terms orders.

Draft orders should have have the same data as Completed/Pending orders.

- Metafields - eg: we need a billing email address field saved to the draft order, and added as a recipient on the invoice sent from a Pending order.

- Tags... all order information.

We currently have workarounds to overcome these issues, but they require manual oversight and cause problems for our staff. We want to automate more of our billing process, but we will have to wait until these concerns are addressed.

Do you have any advise? Thank you!

[Bradleydurham]

We use the draft order feature extensively as well. To over come the issue of two “invoice” numbers, I edited the draft order notification to call it a quote instead of an invoice. 

The metafields thing is dumb. I can add meta fields to orders but not draft orders. Why? I found in the Shopify documentation that there is a liquid object for draft order meta fields and there is a way to.setup a flow to add draft order meta fields, but where can I view them or edit them directly?

[evolutionlures]

I too have to use the draft order form a lot and honestly it feels like almost zero effort was put into its design by the shopify developers. It not only has a ton of usability problems, but the simple fact that you cannot edit any of the line items after you create them shows a total lack of care by the shopify team for its users. What is this, the 90s where you cannot edit a row once it has been created? You have to delete it and try again? And don't accidentally click out of the box or hit escape when adding a line item, because then it just disappears into the ether never to be seen again. Seriously, i think college 101 usability classes cover this stuff. Who is in charge at this company. Clearly they don't care about people who need to create draft orders. So sick of this product.