Order management software that runs the whole order

AxisIQ order management: orders, lines and shipments as records, barcode fulfilment queues, automation on order events, and live Shopify/WooCommerce browse.

Order management software keeps every order — the lines on it, the shipment that fulfils it, the payment that settles it — in one system, so "where is order 4127" has one answer instead of three browser tabs. AxisIQ ships orders, order lines and shipments as built-in record types from day one, then lets you reshape them until they match how your business actually sells: your fields, your numbering, your fulfilment stages, your rules for what happens the moment an order lands.

This page is the tour for that specific job. The wider story — products, stock, customers, suppliers — lives on Operations, and the stock half of it on inventory management.

Orders are records, and that is the point

A new workspace already knows what an order is. Orders, order lines and shipments come built in, with sensible fields, already linked to each other and to products and customers: an order line points at a product, a shipment points at an order, so correcting a product name once fixes every screen that mentions it.

Because they are ordinary records, they inherit everything records get — the same list screens, search, CSV import and export, reports, automations, permissions and audit trail as the rest of the workspace. There is no separate "orders module" with its own rules to learn. And when your business sells something the defaults do not describe — repairs, rentals, made-to-order batches — you create a type of your own and it behaves identically.

Fields and numbers that match your business

Add fields to orders in a few clicks: text, numbers, dates, choice lists, money that carries its currency, links to other records. The rules on a field are checked on every write — a mandatory field, an allowed option, a number range — so a bad value is refused at entry rather than discovered at dispatch.

Order numbers generate themselves. Give the field a pattern like SO-{seq:4:yearly} and every new order takes the next number, resetting yearly, monthly or never. Supply a number of your own and yours wins, which is what keeps historical data from fighting you — the CSV migration guide covers bringing an old order book across.

Finding an order in three seconds

Every order list pages quickly through large tables, sorts, filters by any field — including the ones you added — and searches across the record. "Unshipped orders over 50,000 placed this week, oldest first" is a filter someone applies, not a report someone requests. When a spreadsheet genuinely is the right tool, export up to 10,000 rows to CSV; imports come back in files of up to 500 rows and are validated before a single row is written.

Fulfilment is a queue, not a status column

A status field records where an order is supposed to be. A Work Queue is where the work actually moves, and the difference shows up the first time two packers reach for the same order.

A queue is a sequence of stages you define — to pick, picking, packed, dispatched — and an order sits in exactly one of them. Three verbs move it:

• Scan. A barcode scan looks the item up by its key and either advances it or enqueues it, always answering with a verdict — moved, created, duplicate, unknown, or blocked. Scanning the same code twice is a no-op, so a double beep never creates a double item.
• Claim. A station pulls the next piece of work in one atomic step, so two stations pulling from the same stage can never grab the same order. Claims are held on a lease that expires on its own — a scanner that loses power does not hold its work hostage.
• Move. The only way anything changes stage, and a stage can refuse it: by an allowlist of where work may arrive from, or by a WIP limit that stops a station drowning. A move can also update the order record itself in the same act, so the record and the board never disagree.

New orders can enter a queue automatically through an intake rule — order created, matching your conditions, appears in to pick with nobody clicking anything. And when an item lands in a stage, that stage can fire a function of yours automatically. The full setup, scanner hardware included, is in the barcode workflows guide.

There is one more thing a status column cannot do: reconcile. Seed a queue with the keys off a supplier's manifest, scan what actually arrives, and the summary tells you what is still missing and what turned up that nobody expected.

The moment an order lands, things happen

Flows is the automation layer, and the trigger is the order write itself — no polling, no sync delay. A flow starts when an order is created or updated, reads the record that fired it, branches on a condition, and acts: update the order, create a related record, call an external service over HTTP, or run a JavaScript function of yours — which can in turn enqueue work, patch records, or reach a connected store.

Two properties keep this safe. A flow runs under the permissions of the person who built it, so it can never do anything its author could not do by hand. And it runs in the background after the order is saved, so a broken rule can never slow down or reject an order your team is trying to enter. The order workflow guide builds a complete one in about twenty minutes.

Orders from your store, without a sync project

Connect a Shopify or WooCommerce store and AxisIQ gives you a live, read-only window into it — orders, customers, products, discounts — read directly from the store, paged like any other table. Nothing is copied into AxisIQ and nothing can be broken by looking: browsing is strictly read-only.

When you do want orders written into AxisIQ or pushed back to the store, that is a function or flow you write against a scoped store connection — deliberate and yours to control, rather than a background sync you hope is working. Integrations has the shape of it, and the D2C brands page the store-first version of this whole story.

Questions about orders, answered from the orders

Because orders, shipments and queue movements all live in one database, reporting is a query, not an export. Write SQL directly — orders per day, average order value by month, revenue by customer — or ask in plain English and review the SQL AxisIQ proposes before it runs. Queue history is queryable too, which is how you get the operational numbers a status column never yields: time in each stage, what has sat in picking longest, throughput per station per day. Dashboards assemble from saved queries — see Analytics.

When AxisIQ is the wrong choice

• No shipping-carrier integration. There is no built-in rate shopping, label purchase or tracking sync. A flow can call your courier's API over HTTP and file the response on the shipment, but you read their documentation and map the fields yourself. If comparing carrier rates on every order is your margin, buy a shipping platform first.
• No EDI. If your retail customers mandate X12 or EDIFACT documents, AxisIQ does not speak them; you would need a translator in front.
• No built-in sending. Order confirmations and dispatch notices go out through a flow calling your email or messaging provider — AxisIQ does not send email or SMS itself.
• Store connections browse; they do not sync on their own. A two-way store sync is something you build with functions and flows, not a toggle you switch on.

If most of your volume arrives by EDI, or shipping-rate optimisation is the business, a specialist tool earns its keep. If orders are one part of a wider operation — stock, invoicing, payments, reporting — that is what a small-business ERP is for, and it is the case AxisIQ is built around. Wholesale distribution is the deepest version of it.

FAQ

What does order management software actually do?

It keeps every order, its line items and its shipments in one system, tracks each order through fulfilment stages, and answers questions like "what is unshipped and why" without anyone assembling spreadsheets. In AxisIQ, orders are records with your own fields, fulfilment runs on barcode-driven work queues, and automations fire from the order write itself.

Can I use my own order numbers and fields?

Yes. Add fields of any type to orders — validated on every write — and give the order number a pattern like SO-{seq:4:yearly} so numbers issue themselves. Values you supply explicitly always win, so imported historical orders keep their original numbers.

Does AxisIQ support barcode scanning for order fulfilment?

Yes. A scan looks the item up by its key and either advances it a stage or enqueues it, always answering with a clear verdict, and a duplicate scan changes nothing. Stations claim work atomically on expiring leases, so two packers can never pull the same order.

Can it pull orders from Shopify or WooCommerce?

You can connect a store and browse its orders, customers and products live and read-only, with nothing copied into AxisIQ. Writing store orders into AxisIQ, or pushing changes back, is an automation you build with functions and flows against a scoped store connection.

Can I automate what happens when a new order is created?

Yes — a flow triggers on the order write itself: branch on the total, update the record, call an external API, or run your own function, with an intake rule dropping the order into a fulfilment queue automatically. Every flow runs under its author's permissions and in the background, so a broken rule can never block order entry.

Does AxisIQ integrate with shipping carriers or EDI?

Not out of the box. A flow can call any carrier's API over HTTP and store the response, but there is no built-in rate shopping, label printing or tracking sync, and there is no EDI support. Businesses whose volume depends on either should pair AxisIQ with a specialist or choose one instead.