Hello and welcome @Chelsea_Ashe!
When using an Airtable view you can manually reorder records for that view but those manual order changes will only be applicable to that view. This is to allow flexibility in ordering across different views depending on what information is most important in that particular view.
I’d love to help figure out how to best convert your existing workflows for Airtable Views. Could you provide more details on how you’d like your view to be structured? Or if there is possibly another field type that could be indicative for ensuring your records are in the order you’d like?