Understanding your order statuses

Orders have a variety of statuses such as order status, payment status, fulfillment status, and return status. These statuses are used to create views that help you to track the progress of your orders and find orders that need work.

You can filter your orders using different combinations of order statuses.

Order status

Orders are either Open or Archived, but can have additional statuses. Archived orders that were canceled, display Canceled and Archived statuses. Orders have one or more of following statuses:

Order statuses and their operational significance.
StatusDescription
OpenThe order was placed or created. There is work to do for the order, which can include processing payment, fulfilling, or processing returns.
ArchivedThe order was manually or automatically archived.
CanceledThe order was canceled. If a canceled order was not fully refunded, then there might be work remaining for the order.

Payment status

The payment status of an order is an important part of the information that determines what tasks you need to do for an order. Orders have one or more of the following payment statuses:

Overview of payment statuses and associated actions.
StatusDescription
PendingOrders have the Payment pending status for one of the following reasons:
  • During checkout, a customer pays with a different payment method than credit card. In this case, the Payment pending status indicates that the payment provider has started processing, but needs time to complete the payment. The order is created, customers can complete the checkout, and inventory is reserved for the order, but payment isn’t guaranteed.
  • You create an order, check Payment due later, and then set the payment terms.
  • Manual payment methods, such as Cash On Delivery, are activated for your store. An order is created using a manual payment method.
Authorized

The payment provider validated your customer’s payment information. The Authorized status is displayed only if you capture payments manually. It acts as your cue to capture payments before the authorization period expires. The Authorized payment status is used with credit card payments and some other payment methods.

The order is created, customers can complete their checkout, and inventory is reserved.

DuePayment hasn't yet been captured by the due date that was set in the payment terms on an order that has the Payment pending status. This includes orders that have payments due today, as well as orders that have overdue payments.
ExpiringExpiring isn't a payment status, but the Expiring badge is displayed two days before the deadline for capturing payment on orders that have the Authorized payment status.
Expired

Payment wasn't captured before the date that was set by the payment provider on an order that had the Authorized payment status.

Some payment providers that provide alternatives to credit card and cash payments, use the Expired status to indicate that they were unable to process the payment. Contact your payment provider to find out if the payment can still be captured.

PaidPayment was automatically or manually captured, or the order was marked as paid.
RefundedThe full amount that the customer paid for an order was returned to the customer.
Partially refundedThe amount that was returned to a customer is less than the full amount that the customer paid for an order.
Partially paidYou manually captured payment for the order and specified less than the full order value as the payment amount.
VoidedAn unpaid order was manually canceled.
UnpaidUnpaid payment status includes orders that are in Authorized, Pending, Expired, and Partially paid payment status.

Fulfillment status

An order can have one the following fulfillment status:

  • Fulfilled
  • Unfulfilled
  • Partially fulfilled
  • Scheduled
  • On hold

When an order is placed, it has an Unfulfilled fulfillment status, unless you have selected to automatically capture the payment and automatically fulfill all of the order's line items in the checkout settings.

If you have shipped some, but not all, of the items in an order, then the order has a Partially fulfilled fulfillment status. When you've shipped all the items in an order, it's Fulfilled.

Prepaid subscription orders have a Scheduled status until the fulfillment date is reached. When the fulfillment date is reached, the order status updates to Unfulfilled and you can then fulfill the order.

When upsell offers are presented to customers at checkout, the order fulfillment status is set to On hold temporarily. When a fulfillment is On hold you can reserve inventory for the order, but you can't fulfill the order until the fulfillment hold is released, and the order fulfillment status changes to Unfulfilled.

Fulfillments with a manual fulfillment hold have an On hold fulfillment status.

Return status

Orders can have multiple returns. This status determines the most important return task you need to do. Orders without returns don't have a return status. Orders with at least one return have one of the following statuses:

Return status categories and their operational significance.
StatusDescription
Return requestedA return was requested for items in the order. You can approve or decline the return request.
Return in progressThe return request was approved or the return was created in the Shopify admin. You can manage the return, including restocking items in the return or providing a refund.
ReturnedThe return is complete. There is no outstanding work to be done.
Inspection completeThe items in the return were inspected. You can refund the return after reviewing the inspection results.
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