Order lifecycle & fulfilment

An order is the durable commercial record of a checkout. It owns currency and total snapshots, items, addresses, adjustments and status history. Payment and fulfilment are related records, not interchangeable order fields.

Lifecycle stages

1. Cart validated: products, prices, discounts, inventory and buyer data are checked.
2. Order created: order number, items, amounts, currency, operational data and status history are written.
3. Payment attempted: a gateway-specific attempt and reference are recorded.
4. Payment verified: callback or webhook evidence is validated and stored as events/logs.
5. Order transitioned: the order status service records the allowed state change.
6. Fulfilled: fulfilment items and entitlements are created; Moodle enrolment is granted.
7. Communicated: receipt/invoice and transactional notifications are issued.
8. Reported/audited: reporting snapshots and audit records reflect the transaction.

Administration

/local/moderncommerce/admin/orders.php requires viewallorders; status changes require manageorders. /admin/order_view.php?id=ID displays one order and exposes permitted status/refund actions. Customer details are available through /admin/customers.php and /admin/customer.php?id=ID.

Use the status-history record to understand who or what changed an order. Avoid editing database status fields directly; service-level transitions preserve validation, side effects and audit history.

Fulfilment and entitlements

Fulfilment records represent processing of an order. Entitlements represent the learner's right to the purchased target, and entitlement events preserve changes. The enrolment service converts valid course/bundle rights into Moodle enrolment.

For a paid learner without access, check in this order:

1. order and payment attempt status;
2. successful payment event and amount/currency;
3. order items and product-course links;
4. fulfilment and fulfilment items;
5. entitlement and entitlement events;
6. Moodle enrolment method/course state;
7. subscription access or key usage when applicable.

Inventory reservations

Inventory reservations protect limited offers during checkout. Releasing abandoned or invalid reservations is part of order/cart cleanup. The inventory snapshot and reservation state are more reliable diagnostic evidence than the current product stock alone.

Cancellation and reminders

The daily abandoned-order task cancels eligible stale orders. Payment reminders run at 09:00 and 15:00. These tasks depend on Moodle cron and the applicable state/time rules in their task classes; changing a schedule changes when evaluation runs, not the underlying eligibility rules.

Manual recovery

Before manually changing an order, reconcile the gateway. If payment succeeded but fulfilment failed, preserve the successful payment evidence and repair/retry fulfilment rather than initiating a second payment. If no verified payment exists, do not grant paid access without an approved offline/manual process and audit note.