Putting an order's fulfillment on hold
If there's an issue that prevents you from fulfilling an order, then you can put your order's fulfillment on hold. You can put an order's fulfillment on hold for various reasons, such as when an order is flagged as having a high risk of fraud, when inventory isn't available, or when the order cost or quantity exceeds a specific value.
You can manually place and release fulfillment holds or you can use Shopify Flow to automate this process.
Some third-party apps or services can place a system fulfillment hold on your order automatically.
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Hold a fulfillment
When you put a fulfillment on hold, your order's fulfillment status changes to On hold. Your inventory can be reserved, but fulfillment is blocked until the hold is released. Orders that are On hold are excluded from the list of Unfulfilled orders in your Shopify admin. When the hold is released, the order's fulfillment status changes to Unfulfilled.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.
Click the order that you want to put a fulfillment on hold
In the Unfulfilled section where you want to put a fulfillment on hold, click …, and then click Hold fulfillment.
Select the items that you want to put on hold.
In the Hold reason drop-down menu, select a reason for the fulfillment hold.
Click Hold fulfillment.
Release a fulfillment hold
When the issues that prevented you from fulfilling an order are resolved, you can release the manual fulfillment hold. After the fulfillment is released and if no more items are on hold, then the order fulfillment status changes to Unfulfilled.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.
Click the order that you want to release the fulfillment hold on.
In the On hold section where you want to release a fulfillment hold, click Release fulfillment.
System fulfillment holds
System fulfillment holds occur when an app or service places a fulfillment on hold automatically.
You can override a system fulfillment hold, but this might be an infraction of your agreement with the app or service that places the system fulfillment hold. You need to review your agreement, or contact the app or service that places the hold before you override a system fulfillment hold.
Review the following table to learn more about the different types of system fulfillment holds:
| System fulfillment hold type | Description |
|---|---|
| Marketplace authorization pending | A sales channel, such as Facebook or Google, can put your order on hold to perform a fraud analysis and payment authorization. This fulfillment hold can last from 5 minutes to 24 hours. |
| Managed Markets authorization pending | Managed Markets can place your order on hold to perform a fraud analysis and checks your order information, such as your customer's email and phone number, and confirms that accurate duties and import taxes were collected where applicable. This fulfillment hold can last from 5 minutes to 24 hours. |
| Awaiting return items | A fulfillment hold is placed on any exchange items created as part of a return. You can release this hold manually after you receive and inspect the returned items, and when you're ready to fulfill the exchange items. |
| Pending upsell offer | If you use an app for post-purchase upsell offers, then during checkout a customer is presented with an offer, and the fulfillment status of the order changes from Unfulfilled to On hold. The order status remains On hold for one hour. If a customer accepts or declines the offer, then the status changes back to Unfulfilled. |
| Unknown delivery date | A fulfillment hold is placed on orders with a selling plan that requires future fulfillment at an unscheduled date. This hold is usually applied to pre-orders. |
Determining fulfillment status for orders with multiple fulfillments
An order might have more than one fulfillment. Each fulfillment has its own fulfillment ID. For example, items in the same order might be stored and shipped from different locations. If an order contains an unfulfilled fulfillment, then the order's status displays as Unfulfilled instead of On hold.
Review the following breakdown of how an order's fulfillment status is determined when it has multiple fulfillments:
| Fulfillment scenario | Order fulfillment status |
|---|---|
|
| Unfulfilled |
|
| On hold |
|
| Partially fulfilled |
|
| On hold |
Creating automatic fulfillment holds using Shopify Flow
To reduce the time that you spend reviewing orders before you fulfill them, you can use Shopify Flow to automate fulfillment holds. Shopify Flow is available on various plans.
You can create a blank workflow or use the Submit fulfillment request for paid orders that use a specified fulfillment service template that has the Hold fulfillment order action included. This workflow starts when an order is ready to fulfill. Before you activate the workflow, edit the template to add your fulfillment service provider to the Check if criteria that are alongside the Start when card.
Learn more about installing and editing templates using Shopify Flow.