--- title: "How to Take Orders from Instagram DMs | Karobar" url: https://karobar.io/guides/take-orders-from-instagram-dms language: en description: "A simple routine for Instagram DM orders: the 24-hour reply window, faster answers, turning a chat into an order, cash on delivery and tracking updates." --- Guide # How to take orders from Instagram DMs without losing track Answer fast inside Instagram's reply window, turn each chat into a proper order, and keep the buyer updated until delivery. Updated 3 October 2026 · 7 min read Most Instagram shops start the same way. A customer sends a photo of a product, asks the price, asks if the medium size is in stock, and then sends an address. The order lives in a DM thread, a screenshot and maybe a note on your phone. That works for ten orders a week. At fifty it starts to leak: a reply gets missed, an address is copied wrong, and nobody remembers whether the customer was told the parcel had shipped. This guide walks through a simple routine for taking orders from Instagram DMs without losing any of them. It covers what Instagram allows a business to do in DMs, how to answer the repeat questions quickly, how to turn a chat into a proper order record, and how to keep the customer updated until delivery. The examples use [Karobar](https://karobar.io/features/unified-inbox), but most of the routine works with any tool that keeps chats and orders together. ## Why DM orders get lost An Instagram DM is a conversation, not an order form. Three things go wrong once volume grows: - **Replies arrive late.** Buyers asking about price and size usually message several shops at once. The shop that answers first with a clear price often gets the sale. - **Order details are scattered.** The product is in one message, the size in another and the address three days later. Copying that into a spreadsheet is slow and easy to get wrong. - **Nobody owns the chat.** When two people answer DMs from one phone, both assume the other one replied, or both reply with different prices. The fix is to give every DM a clear path: answer, record, confirm, ship, update. The rest of this guide follows that path. ## Step 1: Bring your Instagram DMs into one inbox Instagram only lets outside tools read and send DMs for **professional accounts** (business or creator). If your shop still runs on a personal profile, switch it to a professional account in the Instagram app first. It is free and keeps your followers and posts. In Karobar you connect the account from the channels settings. From then on, new Instagram DMs arrive in the same inbox as your WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and TikTok chats, so a customer who asks on Instagram and later confirms on WhatsApp does not mean switching apps. Comments from your posts appear in a separate comments view, which matters later in this guide. If more than one person answers DMs Give each helper their own login instead of sharing the Instagram password. In Karobar the owner invites team members, chooses which parts of the app each one can open, and assigns chats to a person, by hand or automatically to whoever has the fewest open chats. A team member can only send in chats assigned to them, so two people never answer the same customer. See [team inbox](https://karobar.io/features/scale-with-team). ## Step 2: Know the Instagram reply window Meta, which owns Instagram, limits when a business can message a customer through these tools. The rule is built around the customer's last message: - **Within 24 hours** of the customer's last message, you can reply normally. - **From 24 hours up to 7 days**, a person on your team can still reply. Meta calls this the human agent window. It is meant for a real person finishing a conversation, not for promotions or automated messages. - **After 7 days** you cannot message the customer until they write to you again. Karobar applies this rule for you. Each Instagram chat in the list shows how much time is left, first in hours and then in days, and the message box locks once the window has closed so nothing fails silently. Replies sent between 24 hours and 7 days are marked as human agent messages automatically. Automatic replies only go out inside the first 24 hours. The practical lesson: answer order questions the same day. A buyer who asked about a dress on Monday and gets a reply on Friday has usually bought it somewhere else, and on Tuesday the following week you can no longer reach them at all. ## Step 3: Answer the repeat questions faster Most DM traffic is the same handful of questions: price, size, colour, delivery time, cash on delivery. You can take a lot of that typing off your plate in three ways, from fully fixed to fully personal. 1. **Conversation starters.** Up to four tap-able questions shown when someone opens a chat with you, such as "Do you deliver to my city?" Each one is answered with text you wrote in advance. 2. **Keyword auto replies.** Rules you write once: if a message contains, starts with or exactly matches a word like "price" or "COD", send this reply. Each rule answers the same chat at most once in its cooldown (24 hours by default), so a customer is not sent the same text over and over. These replies are your own words and use no AI. See [inbox auto replies](https://karobar.io/features/inbox-auto-reply). 3. **AI reply drafts.** For everything else, Karobar AI writes a draft from your own product list, prices, variants and business details, and you read it before sending. It describes stock as available, few left or sold out rather than quoting exact counts, and it only looks up a customer's past orders when the message is about an order. See [AI reply drafts](https://karobar.io/features/ai-reply-drafts). Drafts are only as good as the information behind them, so the most useful setup work is filling in your [product catalogue](https://karobar.io/features/products-catalog) with prices and sizes, and keeping stock levels current in [inventory](https://karobar.io/features/inventory) so the AI never offers something that has sold out. ## Step 4: Move buyers from comments to DMs Many orders start as a public comment: "price?", "available in black?". Answering prices in public invites competitors to undercut you, and it leaves the buyer without a next step. A better pattern is to answer privately. Instagram lets a business send one private reply to a comment, within 7 days of it being posted. Karobar's [comment to DM](https://karobar.io/features/comment-auto-dm) uses that: when someone comments a keyword you choose on a post you choose, they get a short DM with a button. Tapping the button opens the conversation and sends your message with links, for example to the product. If they do not tap a link, an optional follow-up goes out after a delay you pick. You can also post one of up to three public replies under the comment, such as "Sent you a DM!", so other people see the shop is responsive. Comment to DM works on Instagram and Facebook posts. Every message in it is text you wrote; the AI does not write automation messages. ## Step 5: Turn the chat into an order record Once the customer says yes, record the order while the chat is open. In Karobar you start a new order from the customer panel next to the conversation. The customer's name and the link back to the chat are filled in for you, so anyone looking at the order later can open the original conversation. 1. Add the products and variants from your catalogue, with quantities. 2. Enter the phone number and shipping address the customer sent. 3. Choose how they pay: cash on delivery, paid in advance, or a part payment. Enter any advance and Karobar works out the amount still to collect. 4. Choose the courier you will use, or a local rider or pickup. 5. Save it as a draft if you are still waiting for details, or place it. Placing an order needs a name, phone number, address, at least one item and a courier. Every order then appears in [Sales Desk](https://karobar.io/features/sales-desk) with its status, payment status and the channel it came from, so you can see at a glance what is pending, confirmed, shipped or delivered. ## Step 6: Confirm, ship and keep the customer updated Cash on delivery orders are cheap to place and expensive to lose, because a refused parcel costs you delivery both ways. Before you ship, confirm the order with the customer and record the result. Each order has a confirmation status you set: unconfirmed, confirmed, unreachable or fake order. Moving an order to confirmed marks who confirmed it and when. When the parcel leaves, add the courier and tracking number to the order. For TCS, Leopards, PostEx, Trax, Swyft and Daraz in Pakistan, Karobar builds the tracking link from the number automatically. For any other courier, paste the tracking link yourself. To tell the customer, use **Notify customer** on the order. It sends a ready message (order confirmed, payment received, shipped, delivered, invoice, or your own text) in the same chat the order came from. On Instagram this only works while the reply window from Step 2 is open, which is one more reason to keep the conversation moving. For orders that came in on WhatsApp you can also switch on automatic updates when an order is confirmed, shipped, delivered or paid. ## A daily routine that keeps DMs and orders in step | When | What to do | Why | | --- | --- | --- | | Morning | Clear chats whose 24-hour window ends today | After that only a person can reply, and after 7 days nobody can | | Every few hours | Send or edit the AI drafts waiting in the inbox | Fast, consistent answers on price, size and delivery | | When a buyer says yes | Record the order from the chat | The details never leave the conversation they came from | | Before dispatch | Confirm cash on delivery orders and set the confirmation status | Fewer refused parcels | | At dispatch | Add courier and tracking number, then notify the customer | Fewer "where is my order?" messages | | Weekly | Update stock and prices in the catalogue | Drafts stay accurate | ## Sources Facts about other companies and platforms come from their own pages, checked on the dates shown. Plans and prices change; check the source before you decide. 1. [Meta: Instagram Messaging API (professional accounts, Human Agent window)](https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/instagram-platform/instagram-api-with-instagram-login/messaging-api) (checked 2026-10-03) 2. [Meta: Messenger Platform policy (24-hour window, 7-day Human Agent tag)](https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/business-messaging/messenger-platform/policy) (checked 2026-10-03) 3. [Meta: Instagram private replies (one reply per comment, within 7 days)](https://developers.facebook.com/documentation/instagram-platform/private-replies) (checked 2026-10-03) FAQ ## Questions? Answers. Any other questions? [Ask support](https://karobar.io/support). ### Can I take Instagram DM orders from a personal account? Not through tools like Karobar. Instagram only allows business tools to read and send DMs for professional accounts. Switching a personal account to a professional one is free and keeps your followers and posts. ### How long do I have to reply to an Instagram DM? You can reply normally for 24 hours after the customer's last message. A person on your team can still reply for up to 7 days. After that you have to wait until the customer messages you again. ### Will Karobar reply to customers automatically? Only with text you wrote yourself: conversation starters, keyword auto replies and comment to DM messages. Replies written by Karobar AI are drafts that you read and send. ### Does Karobar book couriers? No. You book the courier as usual and add the courier and tracking number to the order. For six Pakistani couriers the tracking link is built automatically; for others you paste it. Keep going ## What to look at next [Order management, right inside the chat Leads, orders, bookings: persistent tabs mean you never lose context. Record an order from a chat; the same in… Learn more](https://karobar.io/features/sales-desk)[Comment to DM: a direct DM to anyone who comments Someone comments on your post and Karobar sends them a DM on its own. Public interest becomes a private conver… Learn more](https://karobar.io/features/comment-auto-dm)[One product catalogue for AI replies and your WhatsApp catalog Your product listing gives the AI and your team their context. When a customer asks, the answer comes from you… Learn more](https://karobar.io/features/products-catalog)[AI reply drafts from your catalogue and real stock The AI writes from live inventory, variants and stock: accurate prices, sent only after you approve.… Learn more](https://karobar.io/features/ai-reply-drafts) ## Try it on your own shop 7 days free, no card needed. Connect Instagram, TikTok or WhatsApp and see your own messages in one inbox. [Start free trial](https://karobar.io/login?trial=1&login=1)