How orders flow — enquiry to collection
The full lifecycle of a BakeBase order, what each status means, what the customer sees at each step, and what to do when something goes off-script.
A BakeBase order moves through a deliberate sequence of statuses. You don't
have to memorise them — the Move to → button on the order page does the
right thing — but it helps to know what's happening underneath, especially
when a customer asks "did you get my order?".
The lifecycle in one diagram
enquiry → quoted → deposit_paid → confirmed → preparing → ready → collected → completed
↓
(review request)
You can cancel from almost any state, which moves the order to cancelled
and stops the clock.
What each status means
enquiry
A customer used your Custom cake enquiry form and asked for something
bespoke. You don't know the price yet. Your job: read the request, work
out what to charge, then Move to Quoted.
The customer does not receive an email at this stage — they're already
on your "thanks, we'll be in touch" page, and they wait for your quote.
quoted
You've sent a price. The customer gets an email with the breakdown and a
link to pay the deposit. You're waiting for them to either pay or push back.
The order shows the line items + total + 50% deposit (the deposit % is
configurable in Settings).
deposit_paid
Customer has paid. You're committed. Confirmation email auto-sent.
If they paid via Stripe through the platform, the deposit lands in your
Stripe-connected account immediately. If you marked them as paid manually
(e.g. cash or bank transfer), you've recorded it, but no money has moved.
confirmed
You've explicitly accepted the order — separate from "deposit paid" because
some bakers like a manual checkpoint here ("yes, I have time, the
ingredients are in"). Some bakers skip this and go straight from
deposit_paid to preparing — both are fine.
preparing
You're actively baking. No email goes to the customer.
ready
The cake is done and waiting to be collected. Customer gets a "ready for
collection" email with the date/time you set on the order.
collected
Customer has it. No email.
completed
The job is fully done — typically used a day or two after collection so
you can spot any last-minute issues. A review request email goes out at
this point (asking the customer for a short testimonial that you can
choose to publish).
cancelled
Order is shelved. No automatic emails — you should follow up with the
customer separately.
The buttons that drive it
On the order page (top-right):
- Move to [next status] → — advances the order one step. We confirm if
the next step would email the customer (so a misclick doesn't send "your
order is ready" prematurely). - Cancel — cancels the order with a confirm prompt.
- After any status change you have a 60-second Undo banner at the top
of the page, in case you fat-fingered. The undo can't unsend an email
that's already gone — but it'll quietly tell you when that's the case.
For payments specifically:
- Charge Deposit via Stripe — generates a one-shot Stripe Checkout link
and emails it to the customer. They pay → webhook flips the status. - Mark Deposit Paid — for cash, bank transfer, or any out-of-band
payment. We email the customer a receipt (with confirm prompt to prevent
accidents). - Charge Balance / Mark Balance Paid — same again for the second half.
What the customer sees
Every email they receive is plain, short, and includes the order number,
key dates and the next action. Specifically:
- Quote sent — itemised quote + a link to pay the deposit
- Deposit received — confirmation + amount of balance still due + a
PDF invoice attached - Ready for collection — date + time + your address (if set)
- Review request — a tokenised link to leave a public review on your site
You can preview these emails by sending yourself a fake order — set up a
dummy customer with your own address and walk one through.
When things go sideways
Customer asks to change their order after they've paid the deposit
Edit the order via Update price — it'll recalculate the deposit and
balance due. If the new total is lower than what they've already paid, you
owe them a refund (you handle that yourself in your Stripe dashboard, then
mark the order at the right state on BakeBase).
Customer ghosts you after the quote
Leave the order in quoted for a week, then cancel. The deposit was never
paid so nothing's owed.
Customer pays the deposit but you can't fulfil
Refund them via Stripe directly, then Cancel the order. There's no
way to reverse a deposit-paid status to "no deposit paid" — by design,
because the audit trail matters.
You forgot to mark the cake as ready before collection
Doesn't matter — just move it to collected directly. The customer
already collected it; the email isn't useful retrospectively.
Bulk actions (Pro plan)
If you're advancing or marking-paid several orders at once, the Orders
list has tickboxes — select multiple, then choose an action from the
floating bar at the bottom. Useful for the Sunday-evening "tidy up the
weekend" hour.
See Stripe payments setup for getting deposits + balances flowing.