Send order updates on WhatsApp

Your store can send order updates from your own WhatsApp number: order received, ready to collect, shipped, delivered, cancelled, refunded, and a few more. Customers reply to the same number. Meta charges your account for business-initiated messages; StoreMink adds no fee of its own.

Connect your number

1. Open Settings → Channels and choose WhatsApp. WhatsApp is included from the Basic plan.
2. Answer whether the number is already on the WhatsApp Business app on your phone. If it is, StoreMink keeps it working there as well, and you can still reply from your phone.
3. Choose Connect with Meta, sign in to Facebook, pick or create your business, and confirm the number with the code Meta sends.
4. In WhatsApp Manager, add a payment method under Billing & payments. Without one, Meta does not send business-initiated messages.

Connecting also sends StoreMink's message templates to Meta for review. The WhatsApp card shows how many are approved; Meta usually answers within a day. If the card shows templates still to submit, choose Set up templates to send them. To see every template with Meta's answer, or to add your own, choose Manage templates on the card (see Manage your WhatsApp templates).

Choose which updates go out

Open Settings → Notifications, pick a notification, and tick WhatsApp for customers, your team, or both. The WhatsApp tab shows the exact wording Meta approved and whether that template is approved, still in review, or paused. A message sends only once its template is approved, so a notification switched on during review starts working when Meta approves it without any further action from you.

Team updates go to the mobile number on each team member's account. Customer updates go only to customers who agreed to them.

How customers agree

Once your number is connected, checkout shows two boxes: order updates on WhatsApp, ticked by default, and offers and news on WhatsApp, which the customer must tick themselves. StoreMink records the wording they agreed to and when. Updates for an order go to the mobile number entered for it at checkout, and a customer who leaves the first box unticked receives no WhatsApp updates for that order. Customers can change both choices later under My account on your store, and their replies to any update arrive in Inbox.

Ask cash-on-delivery customers to confirm

Cash-on-delivery orders can be confirmed before you pack them. Under Settings → Channels → WhatsApp → Settings, turn on Ask cash-on-delivery customers to confirm on WhatsApp. A customer who places a cash-on-delivery order for delivery on your website then gets a WhatsApp message with two buttons, Confirm order and Cancel order, instead of the usual order message. Collections and prepaid orders are not asked.

• Confirm order marks the order Confirmed on WhatsApp in Orders, so you know it is worth packing.
• Cancel order cancels it straight away if it has not shipped: the stock goes back on sale, any store credit the customer used goes back to their balance, and you and the customer are told. Nothing was paid, so there is nothing to refund.
• A customer who taps Cancel order after the order has shipped, or after you declined their request to cancel it, is told it can't be cancelled there, and the chat waits for you in Inbox.

The customer gets a reply on WhatsApp after either tap, and the whole exchange appears in Inbox. Until a customer answers, the order shows Awaiting confirmation on WhatsApp. If Meta could not deliver the message, the order shows WhatsApp message not delivered and is never reminded or cancelled automatically, so contact the customer another way. A customer who has not answered 24 hours later gets the message once more, while the order is still pending and your number is connected and switched on; turn off Remind customers who haven't answered after 24 hours if you would rather they did not. To cancel orders nobody confirms, turn on Cancel orders not confirmed within 48 hours: while your number is connected and switched on, a pending order still waiting for an answer 48 hours after the message is cancelled, its stock goes back on sale, the customer is told, and the order shows Not confirmed on WhatsApp. A customer who taps Confirm order after that is told the order was cancelled, and the chat waits for you in Inbox. This message needs its own approval from Meta; until it is approved, customers get the usual order message, and the WhatsApp tab of the Order placed notification shows where the review stands.

If a customer has both SMS and WhatsApp

A customer who can receive an update on both channels gets it once, on WhatsApp. SMS is used when WhatsApp cannot deliver - for example when the customer did not opt in, the template is not yet approved, or Meta reports that the WhatsApp message failed, in which case the SMS goes out as soon as Meta says so. You can change this under Settings → Channels → WhatsApp → Settings: SMS first, or both.

Read what was delivered

Open Logs → WhatsApp logs. Each row shows the message, and whether it was sent, delivered, or read, with the time. A failed row carries Meta's reason, such as a number that is not on WhatsApp. Failed messages also appear under Logs → Failures.

Pause, refresh or disconnect

Pause stops new messages while keeping the connection. Refresh from Meta re-reads your daily sending limit, quality rating, display name review, and template approvals. Disconnect removes the connection from StoreMink; your Meta account and number are untouched, and you can reconnect at any time.