Queue new orders in your Notion operations database
Each order request opens as a To do card in your Notion Orders database, with the product and quantity ready to pick.
New submission on your "Place an order" form
Create a database item in your Orders database with the product, quantity as a number, the customer's name, and a Fulfilment status of "To do"
One-directional. A submission triggers the action — nothing is written back into your form.
Custom orders that arrive by email get worked in whatever order somebody happens to read them. This flow puts each request on the Notion board instead, as a To do card carrying the product, the quantity and the delivery method the customer chose.
Small shops that make to order run on this. Nothing is charged on the form, the order is simply captured and you invoice through the tools you already use, so the board stays a work queue rather than a till, and a card moves to Packed and then Shipped as the item is handled.
Setting it up
- 1
Publish the order form with Item Name or Product as a select listing what you actually make, and keep Quantity a number question rather than free text.
- 2
In Notion, give the Orders database a title, a Product select, a Quantity number, a Fulfilment status select that starts at To do, and a text property for the shipping address.
- 3
In Zapier, pick formformform, the New Submission trigger and the order form, then place a test order so the sample carries a real quantity.
- 4
Add the Notion "Create Database Item" action and choose the Orders database.
- 5
Build the card title from the customer's name and the product, so the kanban board reads at a glance without anyone opening a card.
- 6
Map Quantity into the number property. Kept as text it cannot be summed or sorted, and the picking list stops being reliable.
- 7
Set Fulfilment to "To do" as a fixed value in the Zap. The ops team moves the card along the board from there.
- 8
Turn the Zap on and place one more order from the live form to confirm the card lands in the To do column.
What maps where
Using the Product Order Form as the starting point. These are its real fields — swap in your own and the mapping works the same way.
| Form field | Notion |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Customer name property on the order card |
| Email Address | Email property, for dispatch updates |
| Item Name or Product | Product select |
| Quantity | Quantity number property |
| Delivery Method | Delivery select, used to group the board |
| Special Instructions | Page body of the order card |
Variations worth knowing
Group the Orders board by the Delivery Method value and the two queues stop competing. Pickups can be prepared for a named time, deliveries batched for the courier round, and both still live in a single database the whole shop watches.
Add a Zapier filter that checks Quantity and routes anything above your normal run size to a Production database instead. Large orders need scheduling rather than picking, and keeping them off the day-to-day board stops them blocking it.
If something isn't arriving
Notion only sums a Number property. Change the column type from Text to Number, then check a few older cards, since anything stored with a word next to the figure needs editing by hand before the total is right.
A customer submitted the form twice, often after a slow confirmation screen. Each submission is its own card by design. Compare the submission times in Zapier's task history, then archive the duplicate rather than changing the Zap.
Frequently asked questions
Can the customer pay when they place the order?
Yes. Add products and priced options to the form, then collect payment through secure hosted checkout with Stripe, PayPal, or Square. Payment status is tracked alongside the response.
Will the card update when the order is shipped?
Only when a person moves it. The connection runs one way: submissions create cards, and nothing travels back to the form. Ops changes Fulfilment on the board, and any dispatch email goes out from your normal mail tool.
How do we handle an order with several different items?
The template asks for one product and a quantity per submission. For multi-item orders, either have the customer submit once per item, or map Special Instructions into the page body and let whoever picks the order read the detail there.
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Build the form first
The automation needs somewhere to fire from. Publish a form, connect it once, and every submission from then on runs this flow.
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