Orders & routing
One order book across every channel, and the rules that decide which location fulfils each line.
On this page
Every sale becomes the same kind of record, whatever channel it came from. Routing is the decision that follows: which location ships which line, and what happens when no single one can ship them all.
Lifecycle
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
pending | Created, payment not yet confirmed |
confirmed | Payment authorised, stock reserved |
routed | A location has been assigned per line |
fulfilled | Shipped, wholly or in part |
completed | Delivered and past the returns window |
cancelled | Cancelled before fulfilment, reservations released |
Every transition is recorded with an actor — a person, a connector or a rule — so an order that behaved strangely can be explained rather than guessed at.
How routing decides
Rules are evaluated in order, first match wins, per line.
Locations the channel is allowed to sell from, that hold the variant, and that can ship to the destination.
A marketplace with a promised dispatch time might exclude retail locations entirely; a B2B order might prefer the bulk warehouse regardless of distance.
By proximity to the customer, by stock depth, by cost, or by a priority you set. You choose the objective; the platform applies it consistently.
If one location can ship everything, it does. Splitting is a deliberate outcome for backorders or genuinely distributed stock, not an accident of scoring.
Ship-from-store without emptying the shop
Retail locations can be routable while still protected: exclude them from marketplace availability, apply a heavier buffer, or make them the last resort in the scoring order. The shop keeps its floor stock and still clears slow-moving lines.
Backorders and partials
A line with insufficient stock can be held, backordered against an incoming purchase order, or cancelled with the customer notified — set per channel, because a marketplace's tolerance for a delay is not yours to choose.
Partial fulfilment reports back to the origin channel in the shape that channel expects, which is one of the fiddlier things connectors handle on your behalf.
Returns
Returns start on any channel and are resolved in one place. An accepted return moves stock back through an inspection step before it becomes available again, so a damaged unit does not reappear as sellable.
B2B on the same rails
Quotes, purchase orders, credit terms and account pricing use the same order object with additional states — quoted, approved, invoiced. This is what allows a single inventory pool to serve both sides of a hybrid business rather than dividing stock in advance between two systems that cannot see each other.
Next: Payments.
