Overview
When two or more sales orders are combined using the Ship Together action, Luminous creates one merged Fulfillment Order (FO) that carries all the items from every contributing sales order. Because only one shipment leaves the warehouse, there is one tracking number — and Luminous automatically copies that tracking number onto every original sales order so each one shows accurate shipping information.
How the tracking number is recorded
When the merged shipment is received from your fulfillment channel (for example, ShipStation), Luminous:
- Records the tracking number against the surviving (primary) sales order — exactly the same as for any non-merged shipment.
- Copies the same tracking number to every merged-child sales order — Luminous identifies which sales orders were folded into the merged FO and writes the tracking number to each of them as well.
- Updates the status of each child sales order — shipped quantities, fulfillment status, and order status are all reconciled to reflect that those items have left the warehouse.
- Pushes tracking back to the source sales channel (such as Shopify) for each child order individually, so every customer receives their fulfillment notification.
This automatic propagation also runs as an idempotent recovery step whenever you manually click Get Order Updates on the merged FO, so a child order that was missed on the first sync will catch up on the next run.
Where to see the tracking number
On each Sales Order detail page
Open any of the original sales orders — whether it was the primary order or one of the merged-child orders. In the shipping information section of the order header you will see a Shipment Tracking #s field. This field shows a combined, de-duplicated list of:
- Tracking numbers pulled from actual shipments linked to the order.
- Any tracking numbers added manually via Add Tracking Numbers.
All merged-child orders display the same tracking number as the survival shipment, so each order's detail page is self-contained and accurate.
On the Fulfillment Order detail page
The merged FO's Shipments tab lists every shipment associated with the FO, including the Tracking Number column. Because the merged FO owns the actual shipment record, this is always the authoritative source.
The Linked Fulfillment Orders tab (visible when the FO's Split/Merge field reads Merged / Combined) shows the sibling FOs that were combined into this one. You can navigate from there to each original sales order using the Linked Sales Orders chips at the top of any FO detail page.
If a child order is not showing a tracking number
In rare cases — typically when a shipment arrived before the merge metadata was fully written — a merged-child order may not immediately display the tracking number. Luminous recovers automatically the next time the merged FO is synced. You can trigger this immediately by clicking Get Order Updates on the merged FO. This re-runs the tracking-copy and status-reconciliation steps for all child orders.
If the issue persists after a manual sync, contact Luminous support so a deeper backfill can be run for that merge group.
Tips
- The tracking number that appears on child orders is always the survival shipment's tracking number — there is no separate shipment created per child order.
- Each child order's source channel (e.g., Shopify) receives its own fulfillment notification containing the shared tracking number.
- You can verify which orders belong to a merge group by opening the merged FO and reviewing the Linked Fulfillment Orders tab and the Linked Sales Orders chips.