Symptom

You see a sales order that appears to be stuck in a status like Awaiting Shipment, Pending, or Partially Shipped even though your warehouse has confirmed the order shipped. The fulfillment order may already show Shipped, but the sales order header has not caught up — or the order has not moved at all.

Why It Happens

A sales order and its fulfillment order(s) carry separate statuses that advance independently. After shipping is confirmed, several things must all be true before the sales order header reflects the correct status. If any one of them is missing or blocked, the order gets stuck.

The most common root causes are:

1. The sales-order / fulfillment-order sync has not yet run (or is not enabled for your account)

Luminous updates the fulfillment order (FO) status when it polls your warehouse or OMS. The sales order header is updated in the same sync cycle — but this behaviour was rolled out gradually and may not yet be active for your account. Until it is enabled, the header can lag by hours or stay stuck until a nightly catch-up job runs.

→ See the dedicated article: Why does my sales order show 'Awaiting Shipment' after the fulfillment order is marked shipped?

2. The sales order is Cancelled or On Hold

By design, Luminous will never automatically promote a Cancelled or On Hold sales order to Shipped — even if every fulfillment order line has been shipped. This prevents accidentally reopening a cancelled order. The sales order header will stay in its current status until the hold or cancellation is addressed.

3. Only some lines have shipped so far

If a single fulfillment order covers multiple lines and only some have shipped, the sales order correctly advances to Partially Shipped, not Shipped. This is expected behaviour, not a stuck order.

4. The sales order has not been posted

Fulfillment orders cannot be pushed to a warehouse until the sales order has been posted in Luminous. If posting was skipped or failed (for example, because one or more line items landed in Purgatory with an unrecognized SKU), the order cannot complete the fulfillment cycle and will remain in an early status.

How to Investigate

Work through these checks in order:

Step 1 — Confirm the fulfillment order status

  1. Open Sales Orders and locate the affected order.
  2. Click into the order and find the Fulfillment Orders tab or panel.
  3. Check the status of each fulfillment order. If it reads Shipped, proceed to Step 2. If it still reads Pending, Awaiting Shipment, or Partially Shipped, the warehouse has not yet confirmed full shipment — the sales order status may be correct.

Step 2 — Check for Cancelled or On Hold status

  1. Look at the sales order header status.
  2. If it reads Cancelled or On Hold, this is intentionally blocking automatic promotion. Skip to the How to Resolve section below.

Step 3 — Check if the order is posted

  1. On the sales order detail screen, confirm the order shows as posted (there is no outstanding "Unposted" banner or indicator).
  2. If it is unposted, check Operations → Purgatory for any unmatched line items blocking the posting step.

Step 4 — Check for partial shipment

  1. Review the fulfillment order lines. If some lines show Shipped and others show a different status, Partially Shipped on the sales order is correct.
  2. Only proceed if all lines across all fulfillment orders are confirmed shipped but the sales order still reads Awaiting Shipment or Pending.

Step 5 — Use the Order Aging Monitor to surface stuck orders in bulk If you need to find all orders in this state — not just a single one:

  1. Go to Tools → Admin Tools → Monitors.
  2. Look for your Order Aging Monitor and click View.
  3. The Orders Not Shipped and Stuck Unfulfilled checks will list orders that have been in an open status longer than your configured threshold.
  4. Click Run Now to force an immediate check.

How to Resolve

Cause 1 — Sync lag or sync not yet enabled for your account

  • If the fulfillment order is Shipped but the sales order header is stuck, check whether the in-cycle sync fix is active for your account (see the linked article above for the verification steps).
  • If the sync runs but there is still a lag, wait for the next scheduled OMS poll (typically a few minutes) and refresh the sales order.
  • If the header remains stuck after the poll, contact Luminous support with the sales order number and the time the warehouse confirmed shipment so the sync logs can be reviewed.

Cause 2 — Order is On Hold

  1. Open the sales order.
  2. If the hold is no longer needed, click Remove Hold (or update the hold-until date if one was set).
  3. Once the hold is lifted, the next sync cycle will reconcile the status.

Cause 3 — Order is Cancelled

  • A cancelled order cannot be automatically re-marked Shipped. If the cancellation was made in error, contact Luminous support — reversing a cancellation may require manual intervention depending on your OMS configuration.

Cause 4 — Order not posted / items in Purgatory

  1. Go to Operations → Purgatory.
  2. Find the unmatched line items for the affected order.
  3. Map each item to the correct SKU in your catalog, or add it to your ignored-patterns list if it should never be tracked (e.g., gift cards, discount lines).
  4. Once all items are mapped, use Auto-Map or Reprocess to push the order back into the normal flow.
  5. After the order posts, fulfillment orders can be confirmed and the status will advance normally.

Cause 5 — Partially shipped (expected)

  • No action is needed. When the remaining lines ship and the OMS poll runs, the status will advance to Shipped automatically.

When to Contact Support

Contact Luminous support if:

  • The fulfillment order shows Shipped, the order is not Cancelled or On Hold, it is fully posted, and the sales order header still does not advance after several sync cycles.
  • You believe a cancellation was made in error and you need to reinstate the order.
  • You see a large number of orders in the Order Aging Monitor that cannot be explained by any of the causes above.