Substages & Customer Visibility

Your internal workflow often has more detail than what customers need to see. Substages let you track granular progress internally while showing customers a simplified view.

How It Works

Each stage can be marked as customer visible or internal only. When customers check their order status, they only see the customer-visible stages.

Example: Print Shop Workflow

Your internal Kanban board might have 6 stages:

Art Prep	Screen Prep	Printing	Drying	Quality Check	Ready
Internal	Internal	Customer	Internal	Internal	Customer

But customers only see 2 stages on their tracking page:

Printing	Ready for Pickup
Your order is being printed	Your order is ready!

This keeps customers informed without overwhelming them with internal process details like "Drying" or "Screen Prep" that don't mean much to them.

Configuring Customer Visibility

When editing a stage in Settings → Order Flows, toggle the Customer Visible option:

• On - Customers see this stage on their tracking page
• Off - Stage is internal only, customers skip over it

When an order moves through internal stages, the customer's tracking page continues showing the last customer-visible stage until the order reaches the next visible one.

Best Practices

• Show milestones, not tasks - Customers care about "Shipped" not "Label Printed"
• Trigger emails on customer-visible stages - Notify customers when they'd actually want to know
• Use internal stages for your team - Track "Quality Check" and "Packaging" without confusing customers
• Keep customer stages simple - 3-5 visible stages is usually enough
• Name customer stages clearly - Use language customers understand, not internal jargon