Order status and reservations

Last update: Wed Oct 25 2023 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

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Inventory Management supports partial and full invoicing, payments, shipping, and cancellations per order. As you manage an order through processing, invoicing, shipment, and potentially refunds, Commerce automatically enters or changes reservations to update the salable quantity for a stock (or sales channel) and the on-hand inventory quantity per source. You do not have to actively access or enter reservations. Completing actions to fulfill, cancel, or refund an order does it for you.

These reservations always adjust your salable quantity, with positive or negative amounts to increase or decrease quantities. The result is an update to your on-hand inventory and salable quantities for up-to-date product availability.

For specifics on orders and shipments, see Managing Orders and Shipments.

Order management options

Depending on inventory status and customer requests, you can update orders with partial payments and cancellations, partial shipments from multiple sources or for back orders, or credit memos to refund returned products.

Shipments

After invoicing orders, send partial or full shipments until you fulfill the entire order. Each shipment converts reservation, deducting the amount from the product quantity per source. Reservation compensations enter to update the salable quantity for your stock. If you send partial shipments, each shipment deducts that amount from your product quantity and reservations. Any unshipped product reservations remain in place until they are also shipped, so that your salable amount is current and to give you control over product inventory and support multiple source shipments and backorders.

Canceled orders

If a customer cancels their order before shipment (partial or in full), a new reservation is entered to return the inventory amount to the salable quantity. The reservations effectively cancel each other out, not deducting the quantity from any sources. Other customers can actively purchase those product quantities through the associated stocks and sales channels.

Refunded orders

If a customer requests a refund, issue the credit memo for the partial or full product amounts. When you receive the returned products, enter a credit memo to provide the funds and update product amounts. When selecting the Return to Stock option, Commerce adds quantities back to the products and sources that shipped the orders and reservation compensations to update salable quantities for the associated stock.

Order types

Simple orders begin with a shopping cart, continue to payment, and end with a satisfied delivery. In these orders, Inventory Management easily processes reservations against the availability (or salable quantity) in the cart and checkout, and deducts from the on-hand inventory at shipment.

Process for a simple order

A more complicated order may have partial cancellations, partial shipments, and refunds. In these situations, reservations affect the available inventory to add quantities for cancellations and refunds and decrease quantities when ordered and shipped.

Process for a complicated order

Availability reservations and inventory changes occur based on the order status.