How to write an order confirmation

Twenty minutes after someone orders a $28 cap, they message you: "hi did my order go through?" You've already sent them a receipt with the item, the total and their address on it. They read it. They still asked.

That's because a receipt answers "what did I buy" and the buyer is asking a different question: "what happens now, and what do I do if this goes wrong?" A proper order confirmation answers six things, and the automatic one your shop sends probably answers three of them.

Send it within fifteen minutes. Include: what they bought, what it cost, what they've paid and what's still owed, what happens next with a date on it, how to reach a human, and the one thing you need them to do. That's the list. Everything below is the wording for each rail.

The six jobs

Miss one and it comes back as a message.

1. What they bought. Item, variant, quantity. Written the way they'd say it, not the way your catalogue says it.
2. What it cost. Items, delivery, discount, total. Separately, because a single total is what people query.
3. What's been paid, and what hasn't. The most commonly skipped one, and the source of about half of all "did it go through?" messages.
4. What happens next, with a date. Not "we'll be in touch". "I'll post it Thursday and message you the tracking."
5. How to reach you. A phone number or a handle. Not a support portal.
6. What you need them to do. Sometimes nothing. Often it's "send the transfer with this reference" or "have the cash ready".

Job four is the one that pays for itself. A confirmation that names a day you'll message again, even when nothing will have happened by that day, kills more follow-up messages than anything else you can write. People aren't impatient. They're uncertain, and a date resolves uncertainty.

Three messages, not one

Sellers try to cram everything into one message and end up with something nobody reads. Split it.

Message	When	Its job
Order confirmation	Immediately	I've got it, here's what happens next
Payment confirmation	When you've seen the money	The money is in, you can stop worrying
Dispatch note	When it leaves you	It's moving, here's the tracking

On a card order the first two collapse into one, which is one of the genuine conveniences of taking cards. On bank transfer and cash on delivery they must stay separate, because merging them means either confirming a payment you haven't seen or leaving the buyer hanging.

The email template

Subject: Your order from Field & Thread, order 1042

Hi Grace, thanks, I've got your order.

1x Corduroy 6-panel cap, olive, $28.00 Delivery, USPS Ground Advantage, $5.40 Total $33.40

Paid by card, so nothing further to do.

I embroider these to order, so it'll be about three working days. I'll post it Thursday and send you the tracking number the same day.

If anything's wrong with the order, or you want to change the address, reply to this email or text me on 816-555-0119. I answer between 9 and 7 Central.

Grace, Field & Thread, Kansas City

Read what that does that a receipt doesn't. It says who's writing. It says the thing takes three days and why. It names Thursday. It gives a phone number and the hours it's answered, which quietly manages the expectation of a reply at midnight. And it invites a change of address, which sounds like a risk and is actually how you avoid a return.

The WhatsApp version

Different medium, different length. Nobody reads a five-paragraph WhatsApp.

Hi Grace, got your order. Olive corduroy cap, $28, plus $5.40 delivery, $33.40 total, going to 4412 Harrison St.

Embroidery takes about 3 days. I'll post Thursday and send tracking here.

Anything wrong, just reply on this chat.

Same six jobs, 45 words. The address goes in because on chat there's no other record of it, and reading their own address back to them is how you catch the typo before the courier does.

The bank transfer version

This one has the most work to do, because the buyer has to act.

Hi Grace, thanks, order 1042 is in and held for you.

Olive corduroy cap $28 plus $5.40 delivery. Total $33.40.

To pay, send $33.40 to: Field & Thread LLC Sort code / account: [details] Reference: SL1042

The reference is the bit that matters. Put SL1042 in it and I'll spot your payment straight away. Without it, it can take me a day to match.

I check payments each morning around 9. As soon as I've seen yours I'll message you to confirm, and I post the same day.

Anything wrong, text me on 816-555-0119.

Two things in there are doing unusual work. "Held for you" tells the buyer their item isn't going to be sold to someone else while they get round to paying, which is a fear they won't mention. And "I check payments each morning around 9" sets the clock, so at 11pm they know not to expect anything until tomorrow, and they don't send a chasing message at 7am.

The rest of the reconciliation routine, and why the reference has to be short and ugly, is in how to know a bank transfer actually arrived.

The cash on delivery version

The whole job here is preventing a refusal at the door.

Hi Grace, order confirmed, cash on delivery.

Olive corduroy cap, $28, delivery $5.40. Please have $33.40 ready, exact if you can, the rider won't have change for a fifty.

Delivery is Wednesday or Thursday. The rider will call from a number you won't recognise, so please pick up. If nobody's home the parcel comes back to me and I can't send it again for free.

Reply YES to confirm and I'll dispatch today.

That last line converts a passive order into an active one, and it's the highest-value sentence in cash-on-delivery selling. The warning about the unfamiliar number prevents a large slice of failed deliveries on its own. There's a fuller version of this reasoning, with the arithmetic of what a refusal costs, in cash on delivery for small sellers.

The digital and the booking versions

A file:

Thanks Grace, your download link is in the email that just arrived from me. It works for 5 downloads over 30 days, so save the file somewhere rather than re-downloading from the link. If it doesn't arrive in ten minutes, check spam and then message me, my number's below.

A booking:

Hi Grace, you're booked: Tuesday 12 August, 2:00pm, 60 minutes, at 220 W 6th St, second floor, buzzer 4.

$95 total, paid. I'll send a reminder the day before.

If you need to move it, just message me, more than 24 hours before is free. Inside 24 hours I have to charge half, because I usually can't refill the slot.

Note the cancellation terms restated inside the confirmation. This is the moment they'll actually read them, and it's the difference between enforcing your policy and having an argument about it.

What to leave out

• Marketing. No "check out our new arrivals". This message has a job and asking for a second sale during it makes the first one feel less certain.
• A discount code for next time. Send it later, after delivery, when it means something.
• Every term you have. One relevant term, in the sentence where it applies. The full set lives elsewhere.
• "Your order has been received and is being processed." Nobody has ever been reassured by the passive voice.
• An unsubscribe-heavy footer. A transactional message that looks like a newsletter gets treated like one.

What Sailo sends by itself, and what it leaves you

Sailo does send an order confirmation email automatically, the moment the order is placed, and it's worth knowing precisely what's in it so you don't duplicate it or rely on it.

It comes from your shop's name with your contact email as the reply-to, the subject is "Your order from [your shop]", and it lists every line with variants and quantities, the subtotal, any discount with the coupon code, the delivery line and the total. Then the payment method by name, the delivery label, the pickup location or delivery address, an invoice number and a link to the invoice if there is one. For a digital order it either carries a download button or a line saying the files unlock once you confirm the payment. There's a separate email when you mark the order dispatched, carrying the carrier and tracking number, and another when you record a refund.

Now the gaps, which are the reason this article exists.

It contains no bank details and no payment reference. Those appear on the page the buyer sees straight after ordering, not in the email, so a buyer who closes the tab has nothing to pay against.

It contains no date. Not a dispatch date, not a delivery window, nothing about how long you take.

It contains no phone number and no "message me if something's wrong". The reply-to address is the only route back to you, and only if you've set a contact email.

And, critically: no email address means no email. The confirmation only sends if the order carries a customer email. A buyer who orders through WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram or a phone call may never give you one, and those orders arrive in your chat app instead, pre-written with the item, the options, the address and the total. For that buyer, the confirmation is whatever you type back. There's no automatic anything.

So treat the built-in email as the receipt, and write the message yourself. On chat rails it's the only confirmation that exists. On email it's the one that carries the date, the number and the reassurance.

Worked example: Grace, embroidered caps, Kansas City

Grace embroiders caps in a spare room in Kansas City. $28 plain, $34 with custom text, roughly 70 orders a month, about two-thirds through Instagram DMs and the rest through her shop link.

Her problem wasn't orders. It was that she was getting fifteen to twenty "any update?" messages a week, and each one took a couple of minutes to answer properly. Call it forty minutes a week, mostly in the evening, mostly while she was trying to finish something.

She rewrote her confirmation with a date in it, and set a rule for herself: whatever date she names, she messages on that date, even when there's nothing to say. "Still on track for Thursday" counts.

The update messages dropped to two or three a week inside a month.

The second change was smaller and did more than she expected. She started reading the delivery address back in the confirmation, in full. In eight months she caught eleven wrong addresses, three of which would have been complete losses on custom caps that can't be resold. Eleven catches at maybe $20 of materials each, plus the postage, plus the arguments she didn't have.

The one she got wrong first: she used to write "processing time is 3 to 5 business days" because it sounded safe. Buyers read the 5 and were annoyed when it took 4. She changed it to naming an actual day, "I'll post it Thursday", and the complaints stopped even though nothing about her speed changed. A range makes people plan for the worst end and then feel let down at the middle.

Write yours this afternoon

Take the template that matches your main payment rail, put your own numbers, hours and phone number in it, and save it as a keyboard shortcut with blanks for the item and the date. Fifteen minutes of work.

Then commit to the harder half: whatever date you write in it, message them on that date. That single habit is most of what people mean when they call a small seller professional.

Everything that should be set before the order rather than after it, so the confirmation has less to fix, is in setting expectations before the sale, and the dates you can honestly put in it are worked out in delivery times you can actually promise. The reason all of this matters more than it looks, especially for a buyer who has never bought from you before, is in building trust before money moves.