Symptom
A fulfillment order (FO) on a sales order shows a status of Error or Action Required instead of moving toward Awaiting Shipment or Shipped. The automatic push to your warehouse or OMS may have stalled, and retrying doesn't seem to work. You may also see a failure message when trying to Unpush from WMS.
Why it happens
Push failures → Error status
When Luminous sends a fulfillment order to a connected warehouse or OMS (the push), the external system must accept it. If the request fails, for example because of a missing shipping address, invalid product data, a network error, or a channel-side validation problem, Luminous marks the FO as Error and saves the failure reason in its Error Message. The automatic push scheduler skips FOs that are already in Error, so they won't fix themselves without a manual action or the automatic address-correction recovery (see Step 5).
Action Required status
Action Required Action Required is different from Error. It means the order needs attention before it can proceed. Either the external system (such as your OMS or WMS) returned an exception, or the order failed a validation check, such as a ShipStation Custom Store export validation. You need to step in, either in Luminous or in the external system, before the order can continue.
Unpush failures
An Unpush from WMS removes a pushed FO from the external system and resets it to Pending in Luminous so it can be edited or re-pushed. An unpush can fail if the external system rejects the retraction request (for example, if the order has already started picking or if the channel is temporarily unreachable). Luminous surfaces the failure message in a snackbar notification at the time of the action.
How to resolve
Step 1 — Identify the error message
- Go to Operations > Fulfillment Orders, or open the sales order and go to its Fulfillment Orders tab.
- Click the Error or Action Required status on the left to filter the grid.
- The grid's Error Message column is hidden by default. To show it, open the vertical Columns tab on the right edge of the grid and check Error Message. It shows the specific failure text, for example "Order bill to name is missing."
- To confirm the status of a single FO, open its detail page and check the Fulfillment Order Status field.
- The parent sales order's Activity Log also records each failed push with the reason, for example "Failed to push fulfillment order #LUM-392 to fulfillment channel for this sales order: … 401 Unauthorized." This helps when the Error Message column is blank.
Common causes and fixes:
| Error message pattern | What to fix |
|---|---|
| Missing/incomplete shipping or billing address field | Required data wasn't captured or mapped |
| Validation error from channel | Data doesn't meet the destination system's requirements |
| Network/service unavailable, or 401/403 from the channel | Wait out a temporary outage, or reconnect or refresh the integration's credentials |
| Action Required with an exception from the OMS/WMS | Unconfirmed — see note above |
Step 3 — Retry a failed push
- Open the FO and click Actions (top right) > Push to Fulfillment Channel. This option appears for FOs that haven't been pushed yet and for pushed FOs in Action Required (for those it sends an update to the external system).
- A confirmation dialog, Confirm Push to Fulfillment Channel ("Are you sure you want to push the selected orders to the respective channel?"), lists the Fulfillment Order ID, Target Fulfillment Channel, Warehouse Group, and Fulfillment Channel Store. Click Yes.
- A notification shows whether the push succeeded or failed.
For multiple FOs at once, select them in the Fulfillment Orders grid and use Actions → Push to Fulfillment Channel from the bulk-actions toolbar.
Step 4 — Unpush, correct, and re-push (when the FO is already pushed but needs changes)
If the FO has already been pushed to the external system and you need to edit it or reroute it:
- Open the FO detail page (only available once successfully pushed).
- Click Actions → "Unpush from WMS," confirm the dialog. On success, the FO resets to Pending and can be edited/re-pushed.
- If unpush fails, the reason (e.g. a channel HTTP error, or "already picking") shows in a snackbar and the FO is left unchanged — resolve the issue before retrying.
Step 5 — Missing address auto-recovery
If the original push failed because the ship-to address was missing or incomplete, and you have since corrected the address on the sales order, Luminous automatically schedules a re-push for affected Error FOs whose address is now complete. You do not need to manually retry in that scenario — check the FO status after a few minutes.
When to contact support
- The Error Message column shows an unfamiliar or technical error that does not correspond to any of the patterns above.
- The FO remains in Error even after correcting the data and retrying the push multiple times.
- An unpush fails repeatedly and you cannot cancel the order in the external system.
- You need to bulk-reset or re-route a large number of errored fulfillment orders.
For Purgatory errors (orders not posting due to unmatched SKUs) or Monitor alerts (aging/EDI), see the related article: What do the different order statuses mean in Luminous, and how do I handle order processing errors and alerts?