Invoice ID and Order ID don't match

Fun mystery for you IS Geniuses - Why don’t invoice ID # and Order ID# match?
I have checked old orders, and they used to do so. Somewhere along the way, the numbers diverged - but they are only 4 apart. eg see today’s orders Order ID 176871 has Invoice ID 186875.

My customer service reps been bashing our heads in trying figure out why customers who needed help with orders kept sending us ID# off their receipts that returned the wrong # when we searched their orders. As far I can tell, clients over ever see Invoice #. IS lets you SEE invoice #, but only lets you search Order#.

Is this acting as designed? A fluke? Now that I see the issue I have a workaround, but it would be so much better if they matched again so we can use normal search tools.

invoice id.docx (253.1 KB)

I have seen this question before, and this was the closest thing I could find to an answer: API – Billing Tables Relationships – Novak Solutions

Hopefully it makes more sense to you than it does to me!

Hi @Rachel_Grubbs,

What you have found is the distinction between orders and invoices and the confusion between them tends to be more because of how IS words things in the UI. So when you want to look at invoices you have to go to ecomm->orders, which is a bit confusion because the order is not what it is actually itemizing (even though an order number exists). So here is the difference between the two, keeping in mind that this is coming from a programmer that looks at the data and what I’m explaining is from what I see in the database tables.

Orders are like a template or blueprint for invoices. They are not the ‘house’ that is built but rather the plans for the house. When an order is created, an invoice is also, automatically created along with it. In most cases, they have the same id number to start with and then any new invoices increment by 2 but the order number always stays the same. If there appears to be two of the same order with different id’s then it is definitely because a new order was created not because the id incremented for the same order. But with invoices, the id is meant to increment. In your case, the order and invoice id’s seem to be 4 apart from each other. That I’ve never seen before but I’m sure there is an explanation.

If you use your All Sales (Itemized) report, then it will be different:

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Thank you!

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