Hi, I have noticed that on the “Customer History” tab, inside the order page, it shows correctly for a few customers and for some it doesn’t. It’s the same for the Woocomerce “Customers” tab, it shows several orders of the same customer but woocomerce does interprets them as being different customers, so I don’t get the “total spent” numbers right. I read on the documentation that Woocomerce track customers by their e-mail, and even having the same e-mail on the “customer data” field on the order doesn’t seem to fix it. Would it be related to the fact that some of them I created the order myself on Woocomerce?
Hey there, @benitesreeds! Thanks for contacting us. I’m happy to help you.
Would it be related to the fact that some of them I created the order myself on Woocomerce?
It might.
By default, this is what happens:
If you allow purchases as a guest, every time someone purchases as a guest using the same email, it will be grouped on the customer history
If the customer creates an account, all purcharses under this account will be grouped on customer history
But if there’s an account with the email test@test.com and then there’s a guest purchase with that same email, it will count as a different customer because it was made as a guest, not as the account.
So, when you were creating the order, if under “Customer” you chose the customer’s account, it should log the purchase under the account. But if you did not set the customer and added their email under the billing or shipping information, that would count as a guest order, and log that under a different user.
I hope this was clarifying. Please let us know if there’s anything else we can do to help or if you have any questions.
Thank you for the answer! I think I understood how it works. On my website I disabled the user accounts, so every purchase is made buy customers through the front end are guest purchases, which desired, I didn’t want users to create accounts.
I noticed that is occurring exactly as you described: “If you allow purchases as a guest, every time someone purchases as a guest using the same email, it will be grouped on the customer history”, which is great, no problem here too.
What I noticed is when I create an oder through the Woocommerce backend, it does not group with the other orders made by guests, even when I add the same e-mail on the billing info used by the customer when the order was created trough the front end as a guest user. Also does not group with other orders I created through the Woocommerce backend. It even adds the e-mail on the “customer data” below the billing info.
My main question is, how can I group the guest orders and the backend orders I created? I added the e-mail address and it doesn’t seem to group them.
The behaviour you’re experiencing is as expected. When you manually create an order in the dashboard, it’s treated as a separate “guest” order, even if you use the same email address as an existing customer. This is because the system doesn’t link manual orders to customer accounts or other guest orders.
To group the backend orders with the guest orders, you would need to create a customer account for that email address (for example, Guest Order – Backend), and then associate the manual orders with that customer account. However, as you’ve mentioned that you’ve disabled user accounts on your website, this might not be your ideal solution.
Another workaround could be to use a customer management plugin that allows you to manually assign orders to a specific customer, regardless of whether they are created in the backend or as a guest order on the front end.
I understand now the usual behavior of Woocomerce. Thanks for the time explaining it to me, I will check the plugins you mentioned to see if I can find a solution. I understand not having users can complicate things. Thanks for your time!
