Order statuses

An order carries a status. It is there for you: it is what sorts your list and shows you in one second what is waiting on what.

Status	What it says
Draft	You are preparing. Nothing has gone out.
Brief in	The brief is sent, or a client has just ordered on their own.
In progress	You are working on it.
Waiting on the client	The ball is in their court: an answer, a sign-off, a payment.
Finished	It is over.

Nothing moves on its own, and that is deliberate

The status never changes by itself. A client answering the brief does not move the order to "in progress", and a payment landing does not finish it.

That is a decision rather than an omission. A job can be waiting on a client long after the brief was answered, because you are waiting on a sign-off over the phone. A status that advanced by itself would be wrong half the time, and a wrong status no longer sorts anything.

In the same way, nothing in the application depends on the status. Marking an order Finished locks nothing, blocks no payment and closes no delivery. It is a label, and it is yours.

Your client does not see it

The status is internal. On their tracking page a client sees what concerns them: the rounds of questions, the deliveries, the payment requests, the conversation. Not how you organise yourself.

How to use it

The most effective thing is to pick one simple rule and stick to it. For instance:

• Waiting on the client the moment you cannot move without them. That is the list you look at on Monday morning to know who to chase.
• Finished when the delivery is open and the balance is in. Not before: an order that has left your list with money on it is an invoice nobody remembers.