Offset's Bulk Orders feature allows you to upload a CSV of new orders into Offset directly, which can be paid for individually or in a single batch credit card transaction. The tool is available platform-wide and expedites the process of inputting a large number of orders.

The most common use-case for this feature is Corporate Gifting, where a client is purchasing a large number of Gift Orders.

From the Gifting page (Orders > Bulk) click the red "Import Orders" button to download the most up-to-date CSV template to fill out. This template may evolve over time, so we always recommend downloading a fresh one.

Since the gift orders you're creating are most often going to be purchased by one customer (ie: your corporate client,) you'll want to ensure that the following information is added to the purchasing customer's account in Offset Commerce prior to uploading the CSV.

As mentioned at the head of the article, if you haven't used this tool before we recommend you send us a copy of your CSV to review prior to uploading so we can review it and help ensure it's properly formatted. Once you have your CSV ready to go, click the "Import Orders" button and upload your CSV.

The list of uploaded orders that you will then see on the Bulk Orders page are draft orders. They can be freely deleted or edited prior to processing.

Before you process a large number of orders you should validate that the information you uploaded was interpreted by our import tool as expected.

The "View" button shows next to every uploaded draft order, and clicking it allows you to inspect the order details of a specific order prior to processing it. Pick an order and check that the details match what you have in your CSV.

You can edit a specific order from this screen (changes are saved automatically,) or simply review it to validate that the information you input on your CSV translated as expected. Clicking the "Save for later" button will return you to the Bulk Orders page. You can complete the individual order from there as well, if you'd like to process individually. If there is an issue affecting several of your orders, you will probably want to delete them all, fix the issue in your CSV, and re-upload.

The Gifting tool allows for the ability to create a single credit card transaction for a group of uploaded orders!

After selecting the option, the next screen will allow you to choose the customer's credit card and process the orders. After processing, you will see individual orders for each order in the Orders tab, and an additional order for the client for the full amount.

Under the hood, this is accomplished by charging the client for a customized-amount Gift Card, which is automatically applied to pay for each of the orders.

Curious as to why and how Gift Cards are leveraged for our Bulk Orders tool? Check out the following demo video which covers the entire workflow of applying a single credit card transaction to multiple orders.

If you are receiving payment outside of Offset for your Corporate Orders, you can still use the Bulk Orders tool to import them.

In the CSV you can define if you'd like an order to be payment exempt. If you set all orders as exempt and select "Process Each Order Individually" the orders will be created as The tool will references the payment_id and payment_exempt fields on a per order basis.

The only catch to using the payment_exempt field in the CSV and processing individually, is that once the orders are processed as Offline / Pay Later, they will still show as unpaid. You'll need to manually update them as paid once you receive payment. You can do this in bulk from the Orders page by filtering and selecting the orders you wish to update, and selecting the "Bulk Edit" option.

If you opt to create separate credit card transactions for each order, and all are being placed by the same customer please have your client contact their credit card company within 24 hours of the individual charges being batch-processed, so the card doesn't get shut down mid-batch. The behavior of creating several identical back-to-back orders looks suspicious to credit card companies.

When you're building your CSV, each SKU in an order will have its own row. If an order contains twelve bottles of one SKU, that order will have only one row. But if the order contains twelve different SKUs, that order will have twelve rows. The ID field tells the importer which rows belong together in the same order.

We recommend using ascending numbers for IDs (1, 2, 3, etc.) so you can easily identify how many total orders are in the CSV and later validate the total that were imported.

Here's an example of how this might look in your CSV (highlights only included here to clarify visually how they are grouped.)