You shipped an order from your sales channel, often at the point of sale, where the customer has already walked out with the goods. Qoblex still shows the order as open and Awaiting Stock, and some of its items may now show 0 in your online store even though they are on your shelf.
This article explains why Qoblex holds the order instead of copying your channel, how that can hide stock from your store, and what to do about it: how to prevent it, how to close orders that really did ship, and how to keep an eye on the ones that are stuck.
Why Qoblex does not simply copy your channel
Your sales channel is not an inventory system. Shopify, for example, will fulfill a unit that does not exist and take on-hand to -1. Qoblex does not ship stock it does not have on record (unless the product allows selling when out of stock, see Check your overselling settings).
Shipping stock that is not there would break your stock figures and your stock valuation. Cost of goods sold is calculated from the stock you hold, and it cannot be calculated correctly on stock that does not exist.
So matching your channel here would mean giving up the accuracy you rely on Qoblex for. The stuck order is the symptom. The real problem is that your system and your shelf have drifted apart, and Qoblex is showing you where.
Common reasons for that drift:
- a unit given away, or sold as a $0 promotional item, without a stock movement in Qoblex
- a miscount that left Qoblex with fewer units on record than you have
- variance on the shop floor, where POS sales run ahead of what was counted
What happens with Shopify orders
One Shopify fulfillment is one Qoblex shipment
Qoblex mirrors Shopify’s records one to one. One Shopify order is one Qoblex sales order, and one Shopify fulfillment becomes one Qoblex shipment. Qoblex never splits a single Shopify fulfillment into several Qoblex shipments, because that would break the link between the two records.
The shipment is held as a whole
Before Qoblex dispatches a shipment, it checks that every line in it has enough stock allocated at the shipment’s location. If any line is short, the whole shipment is held. The lines that do have stock are not dispatched either, and the order stays Awaiting Stock.
For example, an order has 3 × A, 2 × B and 2 × C, and Shopify fulfills all of it in one fulfillment. Qoblex only has 1 × C on record, so it holds the whole shipment, and A and B are not dispatched in Qoblex either. The shipment stays on the order without being dispatched.
The warning in Activity
When this happens, Qoblex adds a warning to the Activity feed: Shipment … for order … could not be dispatched automatically, followed by the reason, which names the item that is short. Filter Activity to Warning to find these. See Find and filter activity.
Split the fulfillment in Shopify when you can
Shopify lets you fulfill only part of an order. If you record a fulfillment that contains only the items you have in stock, Qoblex dispatches that shipment, and the rest of the order stays Awaiting Stock until stock is allocated to it.
This is often impractical at the point of sale, where the customer takes everything at once. Treat it as an option for orders you ship, not as the answer for POS.
What happens with WooCommerce orders
WooCommerce has no partial fulfillment. When an order reaches Completed in WooCommerce (or a shipped or delivered status added by a shipping plugin), Qoblex allocates whatever stock it has on record for the order and ships exactly that.
The units Qoblex does not have stay on the order, which stays Awaiting Stock. Using the same example, Qoblex ships 3 × A, 2 × B and 1 × C, and 1 × C stays waiting.
Qoblex does not add an Activity warning for this, so use the saved view described in Keep a live list of stuck orders to find these orders.
How a stuck order hides stock from your store
Qoblex syncs your available stock to your store. Available stock is your on-hand stock minus what is allocated to sales orders (and minus any buffer).
A stuck order keeps its stock allocated. For a Shopify order, whatever Qoblex has for the items in that fulfillment stays allocated to it: in the example, the 3 × A, the 2 × B and the 1 × C. An item on your shelf can then show 0 online, because it is still reserved for an order that, in reality, has already left.
It gets worse when you restock. When stock arrives, Qoblex automatically allocates it to orders that are Awaiting Stock, oldest first. A stuck order, from either channel, can take the new unit, which keeps that item unavailable online. For a high-value item, that is a lost sale.
Prevent orders from getting stuck
Keep your counts accurate
Most stuck orders come from a stock figure in Qoblex that was already wrong before the sale. Record giveaways and promotional items as stock movements, and count the items that keep getting stuck.
If you find yourself closing stuck orders often, the fix is in the process that let the count drift, not in the order.
Check your overselling settings
A product that allows selling when sold out behaves differently. Qoblex reserves the full quantity for it even with no stock, so orders with that product show Ready To Ship instead of Awaiting Stock, and the shortage is hidden rather than shown.
If you want your store to keep overselling but Qoblex to stop, first untick Continue selling when sold out in the Product Synchronization section of your store’s integration settings. Only then turn off Continue selling when out of stock on the products in Qoblex.
Close orders that really did ship
Short of no longer tracking the product, the only way to unlock a stuck order is to give Qoblex enough stock on record for it to ship. Ship with Adjust inventory to cover these orders is built for exactly that: it works out how much each product is short and adds it for you, so you don’t have to calculate it.
On the Sales list, filter by stock status Awaiting Stock, tick the orders that have already left, then open Bulk Actions and choose Ship with that box ticked. For the steps, what the adjustment creates and which orders are skipped, see Ship in Bulk actions on sales orders.
The adjustment records something that already happened in the real world: the unit physically left. After you run it, look into why the count was wrong, so the same items do not get stuck again.
Keep a live list of stuck orders
Make the stuck orders a worklist you can check every day:
- Open Sales and filter by stock status Awaiting Stock.
- Click Save View.
The view appears as a tab above the list. Open it to see every order that is waiting for stock right now. See Find and filter sales orders. For Shopify orders, the Activity warnings described above are a second signal.