How-to › Checkout, orders and customers
How to Set Up Order Emails and Documents
Make sure receipts and shipping emails arrive, look like your brand and say what you want. You check delivery, set your senders, shape each document and test. 11 parts.
Quick links
Where to find it:WP Admin › EasyCart › Settings › Email
Before you start
What your store sends
Which emails go out and where you control them.
Which emails your store sends
What goes out, to whom, and what you control
no stored settingsWhat goes out. When a customer pays, they get the order receipt, and your store notification addresses get a copy. When you ship an order, the customer gets the shipping confirmation. You can also send a packing slip, an invoice or a message from an order, and a refund sends a refund email. Account emails cover password resets and activation, and each email uses the sender you set for its type.
What you control. Two places. Settings › Email controls how mail leaves your site, who it comes from, the logo and the words. Settings › Documents controls what each order document shows.
What you need. The free plugin gives every document its Standard profile, fully editable, with a live preview. PRO or Premium adds more profiles, the invoice PDF, PDF attachments, a logo for each profile and document rules. Those show locked without PRO.
The steps: check delivery, set your senders, review the order emails, shape your documents, then test.
Set it up
Seven steps
Check delivery, set senders, review the order emails, shape the documents and test.
Step 1. Check that mail gets through
Settings › Email › Deliverability
no stored settingsOpen EasyCart › Settings › Email. The Deliverability card has no settings, just tools. Start here.
Email health reports the last seven days: how many sent, how many failed, when the last one went out, the transport in use and the last 14 days as a chart. A red chip says Failing since a date when sends keep failing.
Delivery checks inspects your setup and marks each line Passed, Warning or Problem. It checks your from address is on your own domain, that a mail plugin is in the path, and that your domain has SPF, DKIM and DMARC records. If you use SMTP, it checks that the port is reachable. The checks are advice and never stop an email. Press Run again after you fix something.
Send a test email sends a message to your own address through the same route as order emails, and shows the result on screen.
Fix any Problem lines before you go on. A store that sends from a free webmail address, or from a domain with no DKIM, is the usual reason receipts land in spam.
Step 2. Set the sender and the branding
Settings › Email › Sender
no stored settingsOn the Sender card, set what every email shares:
Send method: WordPress mail or EasyCart built-in mailer. Leave it on WordPress mail if you run an SMTP or mail service plugin. That is the recommended setup.
Store notification addresses: who gets a copy of every order, refund, stock, review and new-account email. Separate several with commas. It ships with a placeholder that is not yours, so change it first.
Email logo with Logo width, Logo height limit and Logo position: the logo at the top of every email.
Store address: printed in the footer of receipts, shipped emails and packing slips when the profile has Store address on.
Email signature text and Email signature image (PRO): a closing block for every automatic email.
⚠️ Careful: The store notification address and both sender addresses ship with placeholder values that are not yours. Until you change them, your copies go nowhere useful and receipts come from an address you do not control. Set all three before your first real order.
Step 3. Set up the order emails
Settings › Email › Order emails
no stored settingsOn the Order emails card:
Order emails come from: the sender shoppers see on receipts, invoices and refunds. Write it as Store Name <orders@yourdomain.com>. It must be on a domain you control.
Send order emails over SMTP: for the built-in mailer only. When on, fill in SMTP host, SMTP port, SMTP encryption, SMTP username and SMTP password. The port and the encryption must agree. A mismatch is the most common reason SMTP sends fail.
Show the shopper’s email address on receipts and Product images on receipts: the same switches as on the receipt document, so changing one changes the other.
Send a test order email: press Send test to get a short test.
The Account emails card has its own Account emails come from and SMTP fields for password resets, activation and abandoned cart reminders. Set it too. Someone locked out of their account is waiting for that email. Tell me when someone registers sends a note to your notification addresses for each new account.
Step 4. Change the receipt wording
Settings › Email › Receipt wording
no stored settingsThe Receipt wording card lists the phrases in the receipt email and on the order-complete page, in your store language. Edit the Receipt subject line, the Greeting, the Thank-you line, the column headings, the totals labels and the closing lines. Phrases for the success page, gift card emails, invoices and refunds sit behind Show advanced settings.
For a store in more than one language, use the Language settings instead. Each language keeps its own copy of every phrase.
Step 5. Shape your documents
Settings › Documents
no stored settingsOpen EasyCart › Settings › Documents. Each document is its own section, and each is a set of show and hide switches with a live preview beside it:
Order receipt: the email a customer gets when they pay, and your store’s copy.
Shipping confirmation: the email a customer gets when their order is marked shipped.
Packing slip: the page that goes in the box.
Invoice PDF (PRO): the invoice or receipt PDF, with your business details.
PRO also adds Invoice email, Gift receipt and Credit note documents.
Switches save the moment you change them. There is no Save button. The preview uses your newest order, and you can type another order number to check one with options or a discount. On a store with no orders yet, the preview appears once there is one.
Every document starts on its Standard profile. Use Edit wording to change its headings and phrases, and Logo & footer (PRO) to give a profile its own images. With PRO you can also add profiles: a new one starts as a copy of the one you are looking at, and each has Rename, Make default, Reset and Delete. The default profile goes out unless you pick another when you send. The full guide to profiles is in the Document Profiles doc.
💡 Note: The Standard profiles read the packing slip, receipt and PDF settings you already had, so upgrading changes nothing on its own.
Step 6 (PRO). Invoice PDF and attachments
Which PDF goes with which email
no stored settingsOn the Invoice PDF section, fill in Business details (your registered name, address and VAT number, which EU invoices must show), the File name (invoice-{order_id}.pdf is the default, and {invoice_number} and {date} also work) and the Paper size (Automatic, A4 or US Letter). Press Send sample under Email me a sample PDF to get one for your latest order.
Then open Email attachments. It is a grid with the emails down the side, which are Order receipt, Order receipt store copy, Order shipped and Packing slip email, and the PDFs across the top, which are Invoice PDF and Packing slip PDF. Each cell is Off, Attach, or Attach with a named profile. Cells save as you change them.
PDFs need the PHP dom and mbstring extensions. If one is missing, a warning names it above the grid, and emails go out without the PDF instead of not at all.
Step 7 (PRO). Different documents for different orders
Document rules and Customer downloads
no stored settingsDocument rules pick profiles, attachments, payment terms and customer downloads for a kind of order. A rule reads When all of these match or When any of these match, then lists conditions: Customer role, Payment (manual, paid online or a free order), Delivery (shipped, local pickup or nothing to ship), Gift order, Order total and Ship-to country. Under Then use choose the profiles and attachments. The first rule that matches wins, and new rules start off until they have a condition.
The free Customer downloads section has two switches: Print receipt link on the account order page and Print receipt link on the order confirmation page. With PRO the same section adds downloads of the receipt PDF, invoice PDF, packing slip and gift receipt from My Account.
Sending documents from an order
Resend, adjust for one send, split a shipment
no stored settingsAnything the store sends automatically can be sent again by hand. Open the order, then its … menu and Send Email, and choose Order receipt or Order shipped. With PRO you can also choose Packing slip, Invoice or Message, pick another profile, attach PDFs and untick items that are not in the box. Every send is written to the order’s activity log. The whole window is covered in Sending Order Documents.
Test it
Every email your customers will see
no stored settings1. On Settings › Email press Send a test email and Send test for the order and account emails. Check the inbox and the spam folder.
2. On Settings › Documents look at each preview. Try an order with a discount, and one with options.
3. Place a real test order with your gateway in test mode. Check the receipt, and the store copy in your own inbox.
4. Ship the order from the order screen with Email the customer ticked. Check the shipped email.
5. If you turned on PDF attachments, open one and read it.
Then turn test mode off.
Keep it running
When an email does not arrive
The email log, the retry queue and the usual problems.
If it does not work
The usual reasons an email is missing or looks wrong
no stored settingsEmails are failing. A banner on EasyCart screens reads Store emails are failing with the last error and a Fix email button. Open the Email log on Settings › Email. It shows each send as Sent, Retrying or Failed, with the recipient, subject and transport, and a search box. It keeps the last 30 days and never stores the message body.
A receipt did not arrive. On the order, look for a red Receipt not sent chip, or an amber Email retrying one. The Email log has a Retry button on each failed row, and Retry all failed at the top.
Failed sends are lost. Tick Retry failed emails automatically in the Email log header. A failed email is then tried again after 1 minute, 10 minutes, 1 hour and 6 hours, for five attempts in all. The Retry queue shows what is waiting, with Send queue now to run it at once. Retries run on WordPress cron every 5 minutes while anything is waiting. A simulated failed message shows a retry happening without emailing anyone.
Everything goes to spam. Read the Delivery checks. A missing SPF, DKIM or DMARC record, or a from address on a different domain than your store, is the usual cause.
No copy reaches you. Store notification addresses still holds the placeholder. Change it.
A PDF is missing. The PHP dom or mbstring extension is off. The warning above the Email attachments grid names it. Ask your host.
Keep going
Related panels
Every setting on the Email page.
Every switch on the Documents page.
Gift, drop-ship and your own profiles.
The Send Email window on an order.
Ready to run your store on WP EasyCart?
Everything in this guide works with the free plugin. PRO and Premium add subscriptions, memberships, wholesale pricing and more. Try every PRO feature free for 14 days.
