Symptom

You notice a sales order that never posted to inventory, appears on the Purgatory page (Shipping → Purgatory), and/or has no fulfillment order attached to it even though the order is past its expected processing time. In some cases the order appears to post successfully but no fulfillment order is ever created.

Part 1 — Order Stuck in Purgatory

Why it happens

Purgatory is Luminous's staging area for orders that have been received from your sales channel (Shopify, ShipStation, etc.) but have not yet been posted to inventory or accounting. An order stays in purgatory when at least one of the following is true:

  1. Unmapped SKU — One or more line items contain a channel SKU that Luminous cannot match to any of its own product SKUs or alternate SKUs. Luminous does not know which inventory record to update, so the order is held.
  2. Order is effectively empty — Every line item is a non-physical item (coupon, adjustment, gift card) or flagged to be ignored, and your settings do not auto-post empty orders.
  3. Manual review required — Your Order Processing Settings are configured to require human approval before an order touches inventory.

How to resolve

Step A – Identify unmapped lines

  1. Go to Shipping → Purgatory.
  2. Find your order. Unmapped line items are highlighted in red; already-ignored lines appear in gray.
  3. Click Edit Item SKUs on the order row to open the line-item editor.

Step B – Map each unmapped line

  1. In the line-item editor, use the product search to select the correct Luminous product for each red (unmapped) line.
  2. If you want Luminous to automatically recognise this channel SKU on future orders, tick Save as alternate SKU. This records the channel SKU permanently against the product so the next matching order maps itself without manual intervention.
  3. Save your changes. Luminous immediately re-evaluates the order; if no unmapped lines remain and your settings allow it, the order will post automatically.

Step C – Handle non-inventory lines For lines that represent shipping fees, discount adjustments, gift cards, or other items you never want to track:

  • Toggle the line to Ignore Item or Non-Physical Item in the same editor. Once all lines are either mapped or flagged, the order can proceed to posting.

Step D – Bulk re-process orders (optional) If many orders need re-mapping at once:

  1. Go to Shipping → Purgatory and click Auto Map SKUs and Reprocess Orders.
  2. This runs two background jobs: one attempts to auto-map all unmapped SKUs using any alternate SKU records you have defined, and the second re-applies your Order Processing Settings rules to all unposted orders. Orders that become fully mapped will post automatically if your settings allow it.

Step E – Review Purgatory settings Open Shipping → Purgatory, click the ⋮ menu, and choose Settings. There you can:**

  • Add Ignored Patterns for lines such as shipping fees or gift cards.
  • Turn on Automatically POST orders with no un-matched line items so fully mapped orders post on their own.

Part 2 — Posted Order Has No Fulfillment Order

Why it happens

Even after an order posts successfully, a fulfillment order is only generated automatically if all of the following conditions are met:

  1. The order is posted — Auto-generation only runs against posted orders (is_posted = true). An order still in purgatory cannot generate a fulfillment order.
  2. A fulfillment priority list exists — The system needs at least one priority list (default or product-specific) that maps products to warehouse groups. With no priority list, there is nowhere to route the order.
  3. Sufficient stock is available — By default, auto-generation does not create a fulfillment order when available stock (on-hand minus pending) falls below your configured threshold. If the Always Create setting is off and no warehouse has enough stock, no fulfillment order is produced.
  4. The auto-generation job has run — The scheduled daily job processes posted orders from the past two days. A very recently posted order may simply be waiting for the next run.

How to resolve

Step 1 – Confirm the order is posted

  • Open the sales order in Luminous. If it still shows an unposted or draft status, resolve any remaining purgatory issues (see Part 1) before continuing.

Step 2 – Trigger manual fulfillment order creation

  • On the posted sales order detail page, use the Create Fulfillment Order button (or equivalent action in your UI) to manually generate the fulfillment order without waiting for the next scheduled run.

Step 3 – Check Smart Fulfillment Settings if stock is the issue

  1. Go to Settings → Smart Fulfillment.
  2. Review the Always Create toggle. When enabled, Luminous creates a fulfillment order even when stock is insufficient, assigning the shortfall to the highest-priority warehouse. When disabled, a stock shortage silently prevents creation.
  3. Check the Partial Fulfillment Threshold — this is the minimum percentage of an item's quantity that a warehouse must have available before it is considered eligible. A high threshold combined with low stock can block order creation.
  4. If shortage alerts are configured, check the email notification recipients to ensure your team is being notified when stock prevents auto-generation.

Step 4 – Verify a fulfillment priority list is configured

  • If no priority list exists or no warehouse is assigned to the relevant product, the system has nowhere to route the order. Contact your Luminous administrator to set up or review priority lists under Fulfillment Settings.

Step 5 – Check for "fulfill separately" products

  • Items marked as Fulfill Separately each get their own individual fulfillment order. If such items are failing their individual validation (e.g. no stock, no priority list), they will silently not generate a fulfillment order. Investigate each item individually.

When to contact support

  • An order's line items are mapped and the order appears posted, but it never appears in your warehouse management system and manual fulfillment order creation does not work.
  • The Auto Map SKUs and Reprocess Orders job completes but orders remain in purgatory with no unmapped lines visible.
  • SKUs that were previously auto-mapping have stopped mapping after a recent import or product change.
  • Shortage alerts are firing but the stock levels in Luminous look correct to you.