How to Create Custom Order Statuses in WooCommerce with AST PRO

WooCommerce gives you exactly one status for a shipped order: Completed. The moment you print a label, the order jumps from Processing to Completed, and the customer receives an email telling them their order is “complete” while the parcel is still sitting on your packing bench. Split an order across two boxes and the problem gets worse, because there is no status for “half of this has left the building”.

It doesn’t have to work that way.

AST PRO — Advanced Shipment Tracking for WooCommerce adds the order statuses WooCommerce is missing: Partially Shipped, Shipped, and Delivered. Each one gets its own colour, its own label, and its own customer email, and you switch them on from a single settings panel instead of writing code.

This guide walks through enabling and customising each status, then putting them to work in your daily fulfillment flow.

How to set up custom order statuses in AST PRO

1. Open the Order Statuses panel
Go to WooCommerce → Shipment Tracking → Settings → Order Statuses & Notifications. Every status you can enable lives here, one row per status, with a live preview of how the label will look in your orders list and emails.

2. Rename “Completed” to “Shipped”
The first toggle rewrites the Completed status label to Shipped across your order screens and customer emails. This is on by default, and for most stores it is the single biggest clarity win: the word “Completed” means nothing to a customer waiting on a parcel, while “Shipped” tells them exactly what happened. If your store uses Completed for something else (digital goods, services), leave this off and use step 4 instead.

3. Enable Partially Shipped
Partially Shipped is on by default and covers orders that leave in more than one shipment. When you add tracking for some items but not all, the order moves to this status and the customer receives a Partially Shipped email listing what has gone out. The order stays visible in your Fulfillment Dashboard until the remaining items ship.

4. Add a separate Shipped status (optional)
If you kept Completed as Completed in step 2, toggle on the standalone Shipped status. AST PRO registers it as a new WooCommerce status that sits right after Completed in every status dropdown, includes it in WooCommerce reports, and adds a “Mark as Shipped” action button to orders in Pending, On Hold, or Processing. You get a clean Processing → Shipped → Completed sequence without touching the meaning of Completed.

5. Turn on Delivered
Delivered closes the loop. Once enabled, you get a “Mark as Delivered” action on completed orders, a “Change status to Delivered” bulk action in the orders list, and Delivered orders are counted as paid in reports and eligible for the “Order again” button. If you connect TrackShip, this status can be set automatically when the carrier confirms delivery, so you never mark it by hand.

6. Pick a colour and theme for each status
Every status row has a colour picker and a Light or Dark theme selector for the label text. The preview pill in the row updates as you change it, so you can see the exact badge your team will scan for in the orders list. Use distinct colours: a blue Partially Shipped, a green Shipped, and a grey Delivered are far easier to read at a glance than three shades of the same colour.

7. Decide which statuses send a customer email
Partially Shipped and Shipped each have a Send Email checkbox in the same row. Tick it and the customer receives a notification when the order enters that status; untick it and the status change is silent. The gear icon on each row opens the Email Customizer, where you can edit the template, and the Preview Email button at the top of the panel shows you the result before you save.

8. Put the statuses to work when you add tracking
When you add a tracking number to an order, the “Mark order as” option lets you choose Shipped or Partially Shipped in the same step, so the status change and the customer email fire together. For batches, use the bulk actions in the orders list: select the orders and choose “Change status to Partially Shipped” or “Change status to Delivered”. Tracking imported by CSV, FTP, or the REST API follows the same rules automatically.

Which status to use when

Status	When the order gets it
Processing	Paid, nothing shipped yet
Partially Shipped	Some items shipped, some still waiting
Shipped	Every item is with the carrier
Delivered	Carrier confirmed delivery
Completed	Order fully closed (if kept separate from Shipped)

Conclusion

Custom order statuses turn your orders list from a two-state board into a real fulfillment pipeline that both your team and your customers can read. AST PRO gives you Partially Shipped, Shipped, and Delivered with colours, emails, and bulk actions built in, so the setup takes minutes rather than a developer’s afternoon.