How fulfillment lifecycles work
When a sales order is routed, each destination warehouse gets a fulfillment order — the instruction to ship its share (that split is the two-tier model). What happens next depends on who does the shipping, and that's the fulfillment order's lifecycle. Each lifecycle moves through different stages, which is why the dispatch board shows a different board per lifecycle tab.
The five lifecycles
Push 3PL — you actively send the order to a carrier or 3PL. It sits at Awaiting dispatch ("routed and ready, but not yet sent — dispatch it"), passes through Submitting while the request is in flight, and lands at Submitted / Accepted where the provider picks, packs, and ships. The request's health is tracked separately as the Request Status.
Pull 3PL — the provider fetches work on its own schedule. You release the order (Awaiting release → Released); the provider downloads it and, optionally, acknowledges it before shipping. Providers may ship straight from Downloaded — Acknowledged is the explicit confirmation, not a required stop.
Manual — a warehouse you operate, with no provider round-trip. The single stage is Awaiting fulfillment: pick the goods (a pick list helps) and record the shipment to complete it.
Pickup — the customer collects. The order moves from Awaiting dispatch ("routed for pickup — not yet staged") to Awaiting Pickup ("staged at the store, awaiting customer collection"), and completes when the customer picks it up.
Channel-Imported — the sales channel itself is fulfilling (Amazon MCF processing, Shopify in progress). SKU.io tracks Channel processing but doesn't dispatch anything; see Amazon FBA, MCF & external fulfillment.
Whatever the lifecycle, anything errored or rejected surfaces in the board's Needs attention column.
Merging
Fulfillment orders heading to the same destination can be combined — the list's Mergeable chip finds candidates, and Merged shows the results. Merging reduces shipments without touching the underlying sales orders; see Split, move & merge fulfillments.
Related
- Fulfillment status reference — every status, stage, and request state.
- Warehouse routing and the warehouse lock — how orders get routed in the first place.