CustomerOrders

CustomerOrders is a data entity used in e-commerce, CRM, and ERP platforms to record orders placed by customers. It functions as the primary record for an order and ties together customer data, order items, payments, and shipments.

Most implementations model CustomerOrders with an order header and a collection of line items. The header typically includes identifiers and metadata such as OrderID, CustomerID, OrderDate, Status, Currency, Subtotal, Tax, Shipping, Discount, TotalAmount, PaymentStatus, PaymentMethod, ShippingMethod, ShippingAddressID, BillingAddressID, CreatedAt, and UpdatedAt. Line items reference the header by OrderID and include ProductID, Quantity, UnitPrice, and LineTotal.

CustomerOrders relate to other domain entities: each order links to one customer, contains many line items, and may be associated with one payment record and multiple shipments. Referential integrity and proper indexing enable efficient queries for order history and fulfillment status.

Typical lifecycle states include Created, Confirmed, Processed, Shipped, Delivered, Cancelled, and Returned. Business rules cover inventory reservation at placement, payment validation, tax and discount calculation, and eligibility checks for refunds or returns.

In practice, CustomerOrders support operations such as placing, updating, cancelling, and querying orders, as well as reporting on sales and customer activity. System designers consider data normalization versus denormalization for reporting and implement auditing fields such as CreatedAt and UpdatedAt.

Potential extensions include linking to payments, shipments, warehouse/inventory, returns, and customer communications. Privacy and retention policies influence how long orders and related data are stored and how access is controlled.