An order is one buyer’s basket: the courses and books they chose, the total they owed, and the mobile money payment that paid for it. Nobody on your staff enters it — the buyers themselves check out — which makes Orders the screen where you watch your store’s commercial activity without lifting a phone.

Each row carries two ideas that are easy to confuse and must not be. Status describes the order: where it is in its own life. Gateway describes the money: what the mobile money operator said about the payment. A buyer who says “I paid” is answered by reading the Gateway value; a colleague asking “is the order all right?” is answered by reading the Status.

Orders also feed the money side of the platform: settled store revenue accumulates per payment method until the weekly transfer moves it to your registered mobile money number.

Reference versus Provider Ref

Reference is the platform’s own number for the order — it is what your customer quotes when they write to you. Provider Ref is the operator’s number for the payment. Keep both: one identifies the sale to you, the other identifies the payment to the bank, and you will need both when a payment is questioned weeks later.

Gateway is about the money, Status is about the order

Gateway reads pending, succeed or fail, and it is the operator’s verdict on the payment. Status is where the order itself has got to. A perfectly healthy payment can sit on an order that has not moved on yet, and vice versa — read the one that answers your actual question.

Payout shows which transfer carried the revenue. Once a number appears in the Payout column, this order’s money has been carried into a transfer. A blank there is not a problem: it means the revenue is still accumulating towards the weekly minimum.

Filter instead of scrolling. Each column has a filter. Filter by Gateway to find everything still pending, by Status to isolate a single stage, or by Items to answer “who bought this course?” — which is the question a school usually asks first.

Create a code in Finance > Promo codes

Click New, type the Code exactly as buyers should type it, choose the Type, set the Value, then decide how many times it may be used and switch Active on. Codes are stored in capital letters, so “rentree25” and “RENTREE25” are the same code to your customer.

Percent or fixed, and the cap that comes with it. Percent takes a percentage of the basket, which moves with the size of the order. Fixed takes a flat amount, which is predictable for the buyer but capped by the basket itself: a 20 000 XAF fixed discount on a 10 000 XAF basket simply brings the total to zero rather than turning it into a credit.

Limit a code with Max uses. Leave the field empty for an unlimited code, or set a number to make it a limited offer. Max uses is counted as orders are placed, so a code advertised to twenty families stops working for the twenty-first — which is exactly what a launch promotion should do. A code can also be restricted to baskets above a minimum amount, which is how you encourage a larger purchase.

Switch a code off when the campaign ends. Rather than editing a live code, switch Active off when the campaign is over. Existing customers keep the discount their order already had, and the code stops being offered to new ones.

The payment is what unlocks the sale

Nothing is delivered on the strength of a basket. When the payment behind an order is settled, the courses on it appear on the buyer’s own account and the books become available to them — the order and its items move together, which is why a single unsettled payment holds the whole basket. A payment the operator never confirmed can be restarted from the buyer’s own account in a couple of clicks, so if they come to you first, the Gateway value tells you whether a retry is even needed or whether the money has already arrived.

What is not covered, and when the money arrives

Store orders cover courses and books. Credits for the AI features are bought separately and are never discounted by a promo code, so a campaign cannot quietly eat into the budget you set aside for AI usage.

Settled orders do not land in your bank immediately: their value accumulates against the payment method the buyer used, and once it reaches the minimum the weekly run carries it to your registered number. That is the link between this screen and the payouts you receive.