WooCommerce Order Status Notifications for Your Team

3 November 20265 min readOrder Management

In short: WooCommerce notifies the shop about only a few events: new, cancelled and failed orders. Every recipient gets the same messages, whether they’re in the warehouse or doing the books. When several people handle orders, a better rule is: every stage has its own recipient. Below we show how to plan those notifications and set them up so nobody has to forward orders by hand.

How do many shops handle orders today?

The order lands in the owner’s inbox. They forward it to the warehouse, message the paint shop on a chat app and, at the end of the month, remind the accountant which orders need an invoice. It works while there are a few orders a day. Then the problems start:

a bottleneck: everything goes through one person, and when they’re away, orders stall,
lost information: a chat message is easy to miss and hard to find a week later,
no history: nobody knows who was told about an order and when.

Which shop notifications does WooCommerce send by default?

In WooCommerce → Settings → Emails you’ll find three messages for the shop:

E-mail	When it’s sent
New order	After checkout
Cancelled order	When an order is cancelled
Failed order	When a payment fails

You can add several recipients to each, separated by commas. There’s one limitation, but it’s a big one: notifications only cover these three events. When an order moves into production, painting or needs an invoice, WooCommerce tells nobody.

How to plan team notifications

Assign stages to people

Write down who in your shop is responsible for each stage of an order. An example for a furniture shop:

Person or department	Status that triggers their e-mail	What they need to do
Warehouse	Picking	Prepare materials and parts
Production	In production	Build the piece to order
Paint shop	Being painted	Paint in the chosen colour
Dispatch	Ready to ship	Book transport for oversized goods
Accountant	Needs invoice	Issue the invoice or check VAT details
Owner	Complaint	Contact the customer

One status, one responsibility

Each notification should have a clear recipient and a clear task. If everyone gets every e-mail, in practice nobody feels responsible.

Say what to do in the message

A team notification doesn’t need to be polite or long. It should say what to do and by when, e.g. “Order {order_number}: pick the parts by 2pm today”.

How to set up team notifications, step by step

WooCommerce doesn’t send notifications at custom order stages, so you need a plugin. We’ll show it with Custom Order Statuses & Email Notifications.

Step 1: add statuses for your stages

Add statuses that match the stages in your plan, e.g. “Picking”, “In production”, “Being painted”. See how to add a custom order status in WooCommerce.

Step 2: enable the team e-mail

In the status settings, tick Send an e-mail to the shop team. You can also send it to your main shop address and add additional recipients separated by commas, e.g. warehouse@yourshop.com.

A warehouse notification: shop address, extra recipients, subject and a message with the task.

Step 3: set the subject and message

Enter a subject, e.g. “Order {order_number} – ready for picking”, and a short message with the task. You can use placeholders such as {order_details} so the product list and shipping address are right there in the e-mail.

Step 4: check the message

Change the status of a test order. Your team member gets an e-mail with a button that opens the order straight in the dashboard. The order notes record that the notification was sent.

The notification your warehouse receives – the button opens the order in the dashboard.

Combine notifications with automatic statuses

The biggest time saver is combining notifications with automatic rules. Example: an order with local pickup and cash payment automatically gets the status “Prepare for pickup”, and the warehouse gets an e-mail straight away. Nobody has to pass anything on by hand. We show how to set up those rules in how to change WooCommerce order status automatically.

Things to watch out for with team notifications

Dashboard access. The button in the e-mail opens the order in the WordPress dashboard. Your team member needs an account with access to orders, e.g. the “Shop manager” role.
Personal data. Notifications can contain customer details such as addresses. Send them only to people who need them, and to company mailboxes, in line with GDPR and your company’s policies.
Don’t double up. If the warehouse already gets the “New order” e-mail, don’t send another at “Processing” unless it means something different.
Inbox filters. A fixed subject prefix such as “[Warehouse]” makes it easy to set up filters and folders.

Frequently asked questions

Can WooCommerce send an e-mail to my warehouse?

Yes, but only for new, cancelled and failed orders. Add the warehouse address as a recipient of the “New order” e-mail. WooCommerce doesn’t send notifications at later stages.

How many people can be notified about one status?

As many as you like. Enter the addresses separated by commas.

Does a team member need an account on the shop?

Not to read the e-mail. To open the order with the button in the message, they need an account with access to orders.

Can the customer and the team get different messages at the same status?

Yes. You set the subject and text of the customer e-mail and the team e-mail separately.

Can I see in the order that a notification was sent?

Yes. Every e-mail sent leaves a note on the order, so you know who was informed and when.

Custom Order Statuses & Email Notifications for WooCommerce

Custom statuses with colours, customer and team e-mails, automatic statuses, renaming and order editing – no coding needed. Try it free for 7 days.

Try it free Plugin documentation

← All posts

A WooCommerce Plugin That Notifies Your Warehouse and Accountant When an Order Status Changes

How do many shops handle orders today?

Which shop notifications does WooCommerce send by default?