Magento 1.x Security Patch Notice
For Magento Open Source 1.5 to 1.9, Magento is providing software security patches through June 2020 to ensure those sites remain secure and compliant. Visit our information page for more details about our software maintenance policy and other considerations for your business.
Order Stages
The Sales menu lists transactions according to where they are in the order workflow. You might think of each of these as a possible stage in the life of an order.
When an order is created, either from the storefront or in the Admin, a sales order is created as a temporary record of the transaction. Sales orders can be seen from the Admin by selecting the Orders option from the Sales menu. Payment has not yet been processed and the order can still be canceled.
An invoice is a record of the receipt of payment for an order. Multiple invoices can be created for a single order, each containing as much or as few of the purchased products that you specify. Depending on the payment action, payment can be automatically captured when the invoice is generated.
A shipment is a record of the products in an order that have been shipped. As with invoices, multiple shipments can be associated with a single order, until all of the products in the order are shipped.
A credit memo is a record of a refund. A product cannot be refunded until it has been paid (which means that it has been invoiced). This means that you are not able to create a credit memo before an invoice has been created. The credit memo serves as a record of a refund, but it is not a record of the actual return of funds to the customer.
The Transactions page lists all payment activity that has taken place between your store and a payment system, and provides access to more detailed information.