Missing Order Numbers

[nikki]

What a great forum; I'm glad I found this! :)

Can anyone here help with me a problem/question about missing order numbers?

A couple of days ago, several customers phoned to report general 'bugginess' on our site. Thinking that maybe something had been corrupted, I did a 'refresh' yesterday afternoon. Since then, we've had only one order, where normally we would have expected at least half a dozen or more. Test orders placed by myself have come through fine; HOWEVER I notice that there are some gaps in the order number sequence.

There are three sequential order numbers 'missing' between the two test orders I placed a few hours apart. Downloading orders gets me the 'no orders were retrieved' message -- does this mean that there are three orders 'lost' somewhere?? If so, what should/can I do to retrieve them, and what can I do to make sure this doesn't happen again? Any insight much appreciated, thank you.

[Menar]

Hi,

It may seem like there are missing orders as gaps appear in the orders number when the orders are downloaded, however what you need to take into account is when a customer browses through your website enters the checkout page's the systems generates a orders number.

Furtermore if the customer decides to quit the process then this order number is then disgarded, so when a another customer enters the site a new number is generated.

If you connect to your FTP server you will see file's with the extension of .Chk, .Cart which are unprocessed orders and the file with the extension of .Ord is the files with fully accomplished order process.

I hope this information is clear and gives you the understanding of how the order number works.

[nikki]

Ah, yes, I understand.

Thank you; that's a big help in understanding.