Vanquish Order Approval – Approve & Reject Orders for WooCommerce
Vanquish Order Approval – Approve & Reject Orders for WooCommerce
Description
Vanquish Order Approval for WooCommerce puts every new order in front of you before it goes ahead. You approve it or reject it from the order screen, the orders list or a bulk action, and the customer is told by email and on their own order page.
Choose when the customer pays:
- Pay, then wait for approval — checkout takes the payment as usual, then the order waits for your decision. Ideal when you want to check stock, an address or a custom request before you ship.
- Wait for approval, then pay — checkout asks for no payment at all. Once you approve the order, the customer gets an email with a payment link, and can also pay from their account. Ideal for quotes, B2B and wholesale, made-to-order and anything you price or confirm by hand.
It works with the block checkout and the classic checkout, with any payment method, and with HPOS (High-Performance Order Storage).
Free features
- Approval for every order, in either workflow: pay then wait, or wait then pay.
- Three order statuses: Waiting for approval, Approved, Rejected, with their own colours in the orders list.
- An Approval box on the order screen: where the order stands, when it was decided, and Approve / Reject buttons.
- An Approval column, Approve / Reject buttons on each waiting order, and bulk actions in the orders list.
- An approval status box for the customer on the order received page and on the order in My account, with a timeline and a Pay button once an approved order can be paid. While the order waits, the box updates by itself when you decide — no reload needed.
- Four emails, managed in WooCommerce Settings Emails like any other: Order awaiting approval and Order approved (with a Pay button when there is something to pay) and Order rejected to the customer, Approved order paid to you. Your own “From” name and address for them, if you like.
- A line in WooCommerce’s “New order” email telling you the order is waiting for your approval.
- Orders can still be edited while they wait.
- Stock held for the order while it waits, and put back when it is rejected; downloadable products unlocked only once the order is approved.
- Orders already placed keep their workflow if you change it later; orders you create by hand in the admin are left alone.
- Every text translatable; template overrides from your theme.
- Migrates automatically from the CodeCanyon plugin “WooCommerce Order Approval”: your settings are imported and your orders keep working, with nothing to convert.
Premium features
- Approval rules — ask for approval only for orders containing certain products, categories (with their subcategories) or tags, or for every order except those. The rest go straight through.
- Automatic approval — approve an order at checkout, without looking at it, when it is paid with a payment method you trust, shipped with a given method, placed by a customer with a given role, with a subtotal (products only, before tax) above or below an amount, or when it uses a coupon marked “approve automatically”.
- Approve from your inbox — Approve and Reject buttons in the “New order” email. Each link is signed, works once and expires, and opens a confirmation page rather than deciding on its own, so mail scanners cannot click it for you.
- Automatic cancellation — an approved order the customer has not paid in time is cancelled and its stock put back.
- Customer cancellation — let the customer cancel the order themselves for a while after it is approved.
- Refund on rejection — rejecting a paid order refunds it automatically through the payment method, when the method supports refunds.
- Reject single products — approve the order but not every product in it: the line stays, costs nothing, and the order total is recalculated. Approve it again and its price comes back.
- A time at checkout — let the customer choose a time for the order (same-day pick-ups and deliveries): earliest and latest time, a minimum notice, an “as soon as possible” choice, optional or required. Classic and block checkout.
- A message for each order — tell this customer something about your decision, with a date and time, in their approval box and in the email.
- Your own wording, in every language — rewrite the approval box and the email subjects, headings and messages, with placeholders such as the order number and the payment link, in each language of a WPML, Polylang or Falang site.
Screenshots, plans and answers on the plugin’s page: vanquishplugins.com/plugins/order-approval.
External services
The free version does not send any data to external services. Everything runs on your own site, and the emails go out through WooCommerce.
This plugin uses Freemius to manage licensing and updates for the premium version, and to offer an optional opt-in when you first activate it. Nothing is sent unless you opt in or activate a licence; if you do, Freemius receives your site URL, WordPress and PHP versions and your administrator email address, in order to deliver updates and support. See freemius.com, its terms and its privacy policy.
The premium version adds no external services of its own: refunds go through the payment method already installed on your site.
More WooCommerce plugins by Vanquish
- Vanquish Upload Files for WooCommerce – let customers upload files (even large ones) on the product, cart, checkout and order pages, for custom, personalized and print-on-demand products.
- Vanquish Shipping Tracking for WooCommerce – tracking numbers on orders and emails, with 1,600+ carriers and their logos, a direct tracking link and a Track button. No account needed.
- Vanquish Multiple Addresses for WooCommerce – give customers an address book: save multiple billing and shipping addresses and pick one at checkout.
- Vanquish Attach Me for WooCommerce – attach any file to any order or product, show it to the customer and send it with the order emails.
Installation
- Upload the plugin files to the
/wp-content/plugins/vanquish-order-approval-for-woocommercedirectory, or install the plugin through the WordPress plugins screen. - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ screen in WordPress.
- Make sure WooCommerce is installed and active.
- Choose your workflow under Order Approval Settings. From then on, every order placed at checkout waits for your decision.
Screenshots
Choose the workflow: pay then wait for approval, or wait for approval then pay.
The Approval box on the order screen: where the order stands, and Approve / Reject. Rejecting single products and the message for the order are Premium.
The orders list: the approval statuses, the Approval column, and Approve / Reject buttons on each waiting order.
What the customer sees: an approval status box with a timeline, and a Pay button once the order is approved.
The "Order approved" email, with the payment link.
Premium: which orders need approval, and automatic approval by payment method, shipping, role or subtotal.
Premium: Approve and Reject buttons right in the "New order" email.
Faq
Pay, then wait if you would normally take the order anyway and only want a chance to say no: the money is collected at checkout, and if you reject the order you refund it (Premium can do that for you). Wait, then pay if you need to confirm price, stock or feasibility first: nothing is charged until you approve, and the customer pays from the link in the “Order approved” email or from their account.
Yes. Both workflows work with the block checkout and with the classic [woocommerce_checkout] shortcode.
Yes, with any of them. If orders paid with a particular method do not reach “Waiting for approval”, the Advanced section of Order Approval Settings has other moments to assign the status at, for payment plugins that behave unusually.
Yes. An approved order shows a Pay button in the customer’s approval box and in My account Orders, and the “Order approved” email carries the payment link. With Premium you can cancel approved orders that are not paid within a time you choose.
No. In “wait, then pay” the order goes straight to “Waiting for approval” without passing through “Processing”, so the customer never receives the “your order is being processed” email for an order you have not accepted yet, and nothing is charged until they pay the approved order.
Stock is taken out when the order is placed, as WooCommerce always does, so nobody else can buy the units you are deciding about. Rejecting the order puts it back.
Yes, with HPOS and with the classic order storage.
No. The order statuses have the same names, so every order — waiting, approved, rejected, or long completed — keeps its status and history with nothing to convert. Your settings are imported automatically the first time the new plugin runs, and Order Approval Settings Import from the old plugin shows what was imported. The old plugin’s data is never changed or deleted, so you can always go back.
The two plugins drive the same statuses, so they cannot run together: while the old one is active the new one waits and says so. Deactivate the old one and everything carries on.
Only in part, so check your store in its language before you go live. The new plugin has its own texts and text domain (vanquish-order-approval-for-woocommerce): translations made for the old plugin, such as Loco Translate files, are reused only for the texts that did not change, like the order statuses. With Premium, the wording of the emails and of the customer’s approval box is imported in your language, and you can edit it under Order Approval Settings Texts. Everything else is translated by the community on translate.wordpress.org; until your language is complete there, Loco Translate can fill in the missing texts.
The plugin’s texts are translatable like any other plugin’s, and each email’s subject, heading and additional content are edited in WooCommerce Settings Emails. Premium adds a Texts screen to rewrite the approval box and the email messages, per language.
No. The premium package is the same plugin with more in it. Everything described above under “free features” works the same either way, and the settings you have already made are untouched by activating a licence.
There are monthly, yearly and lifetime plans, for one site up to twenty-five. The current prices are on the pricing page.
To order, install and activate the free version, then go to Order Approval Upgrade in your WordPress admin. The plans and a secure checkout, handled by Freemius, are right there, and the same screen walks you through activating Premium on your site.
Yes, and it is strongly recommended. The free version on WordPress.org is the same plugin with fewer features: install it on your own site, with your own theme and payment methods, and check that the approval flow fits your checkout, your emails and the customer’s account pages before upgrading. Premium adds features on top of it, on the same foundations.
Nothing of yours is removed: your settings and your orders, with their statuses, stay as they are, so reinstalling puts you back exactly where you were. Only the plugin’s scheduled events and caches go.
Reviews
Perfect solution for order management – highly intuitive!
By 
This plugin is exactly what I needed. It is incredibly easy to configure and use, saving me a lot of time daily. It comes packed with a comprehensive set of features that cover every possible scenario, including automated emails and custom order statuses. Everything runs smoothly on the site. A solid 5-star plugin!
Outstanding plugin! Incredibly feature-rich and easy to use
By 
I am extremely impressed with this plugin. It integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce and works flawlessly right out of the box. Setting up the order approval workflow was a breeze, and the user interface is very intuitive.
What really sets this apart is how complete the features are: from handling both "pay then wait" and "wait then pay" workflows to the automated emails and full compatibility with block checkouts and HPOS. It gives you absolute control over your order management without any complexity.
Highly recommended!
Changelog
1.0.6
- Fixed: with another plugin that reads the scheduled tasks very early (for example Really Simple Security), versions 1.0.4 and 1.0.5 could stop every page of the site with a critical error. Texts translated that early are now left as they are.
1.0.5
- Switching from the CodeCanyon plugin: the old plugin’s translations are now found also on stores that never saved its settings, and also when WordPress keeps them only as .l10n.php files.
1.0.4
- Switching from the CodeCanyon plugin on a store in another language: the old plugin’s translations (for example Loco Translate files) are now reused for the texts that did not change, such as the order statuses and “Approval status”.
- Premium: on a single-language store that never edited the old plugin’s texts, the emails and the customer’s approval box are now imported in the store’s language, as the old plugin showed them, instead of falling back to English.
- Premium: “Import the settings again” now brings back the old wording too (only texts still empty).
- The import screen and a new FAQ explain what happens to the old plugin’s translations and what to check before going live.
- Premium: an unreadable earliest or latest time imported from the old plugin no longer breaks the checkout time selector.
1.0.3
- The plugin icon on the Freemius screens (Account, Upgrade) now uses the new colours.
- The plugin’s homepage, linked from the Plugins screen, is now its page on vanquishplugins.com, with screenshots, plans and answers.
1.0.2
- Updated the plugin icon to the new colours.
1.0.1
- Fixed: saving the settings without an active Premium licence erased the stored Premium settings, so they were not there any more after renewing or reactivating the licence. They are now kept.
1.0.0
- First release, replacing the CodeCanyon plugin “WooCommerce Order Approval”.