Understanding Order & Fulfillment Statuses

Orca tracks every order and transfer through a small set of statuses. This article explains what each one means and where to look when something needs your attention.

Routing statuses

Routed — Orca evaluated your rules and assigned the order to one or more locations. This is the normal outcome.

Failed — Orca could not complete routing, for example because no location or transfer combination could cover the order. The order is held and flagged for your review; you can adjust stock or rules and re-route it from the order page.

Skipped — Orca intentionally took no action. This happens when an order does not match any routing rules, contains no physical items, or when Orca is running in simulation mode.

Hold reasons

A held order in Orca shows the specific reason for the hold:

Transfer in transit — routing succeeded and stock is on its way to the fulfilling location. The hold releases automatically when the transfer is received.

Inventory out of stock — the order, or part of it, could not be covered by available stock. It waits until inventory becomes available or you intervene.

Routing issue — routing did not complete normally. Review the order in Orca to see what happened.

Note: in your Shopify admin, all of these appear the same way — the order is On hold with the reason "Inventory out of stock". Open the order in Orca to see the specific reason.

Transfer stages

A transfer moves through a simple lifecycle: it is created (by Orca for an order, or by you to rebalance stock), marked ready once the items are packed at the origin, shipped while in transit, and received when staff scan the items in at the destination. Receiving is what updates inventory and releases any order waiting on the transfer.

Simulation mode

On the free plan, or when Orca Actions is disabled in settings, Orca evaluates every order and records what it would have done — but changes nothing in your Shopify store. No orders are moved, no transfers are created, and no holds are placed. This lets you see Orca's decisions before letting it act.