How to get order and stock notifications in WooCommerce

Separate the alerts into three groups: new orders for the person handling fulfilment, low-stock warnings for replenishment, and out-of-stock warnings for urgent action. WooCommerce can handle these standard store-wide emails without custom code.

If different staff members need different products, departments or order types, note those rules now. The built-in settings send alerts to configured recipients, but they do not provide detailed routing for every product or user role.

Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Emails, find New order, and select Manage. Make sure the notification is enabled, then enter the required addresses in Recipient(s), separated by commas. Save the changes.

This email is intended for store recipients and includes order details. Do not rely on the default administrator address without checking it, especially if orders are handled by a fulfilment team.

Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Inventory. Enable low stock notifications and out of stock notifications, enter the notification recipients, and set the store-wide Low stock threshold. Review the out-of-stock threshold as well.

WooCommerce sends stock alerts when stock management is enabled. If a product has no tracked quantity, changing its displayed stock status will not create the same quantity-based alerts.

Edit a product and open Product data > Inventory. Enable stock management, enter the stock quantity, choose whether backorders are allowed, and set a product-specific low-stock threshold if the global value is not suitable. Update the product.

For variable products, check the Variations tab and configure stock management and thresholds on each relevant variation. A common Friday-afternoon failure is enabling notifications globally while leaving the product or variation set to manual stock status, so no quantity crosses the threshold.

Use a test product or a real product with a safe stock quantity. Place an order that reduces stock to the low-stock threshold, then repeat only if you need to verify the out-of-stock message. Confirm that the new-order and stock emails reach every intended recipient.

If an email is missing, check WooCommerce > Status > Logs and review the transactional-emails log. A disabled or skipped entry points to configuration or missing-recipient issues; a sent entry usually means delivery, spam filtering or the site mail service needs checking. WooCommerce sends mail through WordPress's wp_mail() by default, so an SMTP or hosting problem can affect delivery even when WooCommerce is configured correctly.

The built-in settings are usually enough for one store owner or a small team. Use a dedicated notification plugin when warehouse staff, suppliers or shop managers need different alerts, or when notifications must be limited to selected products and stock events.

Fast way: WooCommerce Advanced Notifications is suited to role-based order and inventory alerts, custom messages, multiple recipients, multilingual stores and notification logs. Install and activate it, create the recipients and triggers you need, then keep WooCommerce's core emails enabled unless the new rules intentionally replace them.