Glossary

SKU.io uses some industry shorthand and a few terms of its own. Each entry below defines one in a sentence or two, and links to the guide that covers it in depth. To look up every field, column, or status on a screen, use Reference pages.

Numbers

3-way match — A check that lines up three documents for the same goods — your purchase order, your goods receipt, and the supplier's invoice — and flags any line where the quantity or price doesn't agree. It's what stops you paying for stock you never received, or at a price nobody agreed to.

3PL (Third-Party Logistics) — An outside company you pay to store your inventory and pack and ship your orders for you, instead of doing it in your own warehouse. SKU.io hands shipments to a 3PL when you dispatch a fulfillment to a provider such as ShipHero, ShipStation, or Shipfusion.

A

AFN (Amazon Fulfillment Network) — Amazon's own fulfillment: you send stock to Amazon, and Amazon picks, packs, and ships the order. An AFN order (also called an FBA order) ships outside SKU, so it never draws down your local inventory or realizes local COGS — SKU only mirrors what Amazon shipped. See Amazon FBA, MCF, and externally fulfilled orders.

Allocation (inventory allocation) — A commitment of specific on-hand or incoming stock to a sales order line. Each allocation carries a state — Planned (a backorder, nothing physical committed yet), Awaiting Receipt (covered by an incoming purchase order), Allocated (on-hand stock reserved to the line), Fulfilled (shipped), or Cancelled (a terminal audit row) — and this is what SKU counts as "committed", not inventory movements. See Inventory allocation and backorders.

Amount due — What the customer still owes on an order: the order total minus payments taken minus any store credit applied. See Record payments and apply store credit.

Approve — The action that commits stock to an order and moves it out of draft. Approving marks the order Open (or Reserved), creates the inventory allocations, and lets the order enter the fulfillment pipeline. See Approve, reserve, and allocate stock.

Archive — Hiding an order from the working list without deleting it. Archived orders keep all their data and can be unarchived at any time. See Close, cancel, archive, and delete orders.

ASN (Advanced Shipment Notice) — A heads-up document a supplier sends before a shipment arrives, listing exactly what's coming and how it's packed, so your receiving team knows what to expect. When you supply retailers over EDI, you send them ASNs, called ship notices (856). See Pack and label SPS Commerce shipments.

Awaiting pickup — A fulfillment state for Click and Collect orders: the goods are staged for the customer to collect, but no shipment record exists yet. The shipment is created only when the order is marked as picked up. See Fulfill a sales order.

Awaiting tracking — A fulfillment state where the order has been dispatched to a carrier or 3PL but no tracking number has come back yet. The order stays Open while it waits. See How sales order status works.

AWD (Amazon Warehousing & Distribution) — Amazon's bulk storage service. You send inventory to Amazon's warehouses in large quantities, and Amazon restocks it into its fulfillment network as it's needed. SKU.io tracks AWD stock as externally held inventory, and units it ships count toward the order without a local inventory movement. See Amazon FBA, MCF, and externally fulfilled orders.

B

Backorder — Stock a customer has ordered that you can't ship yet because it's out of stock. The line stays open with a Planned allocation and is filled automatically once inventory arrives. A backorder is a state of the order line, not a separate record. See Inventory allocation and backorders.

Backorder queue — The list of all lines waiting on stock, with an ETA drawn from any linked incoming purchase order. When stock frees up — a purchase order is received, or a reservation is released — SKU auto-allocates it to the oldest waiting demand first (FIFO). See Inventory allocation and backorders.

Bill of lading (BOL) — The document a freight carrier signs when it picks up a shipment, listing what it's carrying and where to. Retailers expect its number on the ship notice and carton labels of freight (LTL) shipments. See Pack and label SPS Commerce shipments.

Brand report — A weekly or monthly report about one brand you distribute, covering its sales by channel, its core products, its Amazon listings and, monthly, its listing quality and FBA stock. SKU.io builds it on the brand's schedule, you review it, and it's emailed to the brand's report recipients. See Brand Reports.

Bundle (kit) — A product sold as one line that's made up of several component products. For allocation and fulfillment the bundle explodes into demand for each component, while the customer still sees a single sold line. See Manage order lines.

Buy Box (featured offer) — The offer Amazon shows in the Add to Cart box on a product page. Most sales on a listing go to whoever holds it, and it can change hands many times a day between sellers. Brand reports show who held it and for how much of the period. See Review a brand report.

C

Cancel — Ending an order early. Cancelling deletes any non-shipped shipments, cancels open allocations, stamps the remaining unshipped quantity as cancelled, removes the accounting transaction, and closes the order — while preserving inventory movements on lines that already shipped so COGS history stays intact. Orders that originate in an external channel must be cancelled in that channel. See Close, cancel, archive, and delete orders.

Channel order (sales channel order) — A sales order that originated on a connected marketplace or storefront — Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, Faire, or the point of sale — and was imported into SKU as a canonical sales order. SKU mirrors the channel record and writes fulfillment back to it. See How channel orders sync.

Clawback (reimbursement reversal) — Money Amazon takes back from an earlier FBA reimbursement, usually because it found the units it paid for. SKU.io posts the mirror of the original reimbursed-unit COGS journal for exactly the units taken back. See How FBA reimbursements are accounted for.

Click and Collect — In-store or curbside pickup. Marking line quantities for pickup parks the fulfillment as awaiting pickup until the customer collects. See Fulfill a sales order.

Close — Marking an order complete. An order closes automatically once every line is fully shipped, or you can close it manually. Closing is blocked while active backorders exist or any product line is still unmapped. See Close, cancel, archive, and delete orders.

COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) — The direct cost of the products you actually sold — essentially what you paid your suppliers for those specific units. It's the figure subtracted from sales to work out gross profit. SKU.io records COGS when a shipment is fulfilled, by drawing down your oldest FIFO layers. See How fulfilling moves inventory and realizes COGS.

Competition monitoring — A per-brand setting on each Amazon channel that adds seller and FBA counts, their history, exact offer totals and an estimated total market to the brand's reports. Turn it on for brands other sellers also carry. See Turn on competition monitoring.

Core product (core ASIN) — A product a brand's reports cover. Picked automatically from recent sales, added by hand, or both. See Choose a brand's core products.

Credit note — See Sales credit.

Custom field — A per-tenant field your team defines to capture extra data on an order (for example a project code or a delivery instruction). Custom fields can be filtered on in the list. See Add notes, tags, and custom fields.

D

Days of cover — How many days of sales a product's stock lasts at its current daily sales. An FBA minimum set in days of cover also adds the lead time into FBA, so it works as a reorder point. See Set FBA minimum stock levels. Delivery type (Pinnacle) — The service level MWD performs on a Pinnacle delivery, such as threshold or white-glove. You map each SKU.io shipping method you send to Pinnacle to a delivery type, and every order with that method carries it. See Set up Pinnacle (MWD) deliveries.

Dispatch — Handing a planned fulfillment to a carrier, 3PL, or Amazon MCF so they can ship it. Until a fulfillment is dispatched it exists only as an intent inside SKU. See Fulfill a sales order.

Disposition — The policy that decides what happens to returned stock when it's received — restocked into sellable inventory, sent to a quarantine or different warehouse, or scrapped. See Returns, credits, and refunds.

Draft — The default status of a new order: no stock is committed, and the order isn't yet in the fulfillment pipeline. Drafts may omit lines. Approving turns a draft into an Open (or Reserved) order. See How sales order status works.

Dropship — A fulfillment method where your supplier ships an order directly to your customer on your behalf, so the goods never pass through your own warehouse. In SKU.io a dropship request turns selected order lines into a supplier purchase order and skips local allocation. See Create a dropship request.

E

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) — The standard way large retailers exchange business documents with suppliers: purchase orders, acknowledgments, ship notices, invoices and inventory advice, each a structured electronic file known by a three-digit code such as 850 or 856. SKU.io trades EDI through SPS Commerce. See How SPS Commerce EDI works.

ETA / ETD — Estimated Time of Arrival (when a shipment is expected to reach you) and Estimated Time of Departure (when it's expected to leave the supplier or port). Used to plan when incoming stock will be available.

Exchange — A swap order created from an existing one: SKU clones the chosen lines into a new order (its number carries an -E- marker before a date stamp, for example, SO1234-E-20260710), and automatically creates and approves a sales credit for the original value to fund it. The two orders stay linked. See Resend and exchange an order.

Exposure — Your total financial commitment tied up in stock you've ordered but not yet sold — the money at risk if that inventory doesn't sell as planned.

Externally fulfilled quantity — Units on a line that were shipped outside SKU — by Amazon FBA, MCF, or AWD — rather than from your own stock. These count as fulfilled without writing a local inventory movement or COGS. See Amazon FBA, MCF, and externally fulfilled orders.

F

FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) — A service where you send inventory to Amazon, and Amazon stores it, then picks, packs, and ships your Amazon orders and handles customer service for them. In SKU.io an FBA order is an AFN order: it ships outside SKU.io, with no local inventory movement or COGS. See Fulfill via Amazon FBA or MCF.

FBA minimum (FBA floor) — The least stock you want for one product at one Amazon FBA region, in units, days of cover, or the greater of both. When counted stock stays below it, SKU.io sends an FBA Low Stock alert. See Set FBA minimum stock levels.

FBA reimbursement — A payment Amazon makes for FBA units it lost or damaged, in cash or as replacement units. Amazon can take it back (a clawback) if it later finds the units. SKU.io matches each reimbursement to the loss it pays for and compares it with the FIFO cost of the units. See Check whether Amazon reimburses you at cost.

FIFO (First In, First Out) — An inventory rule where the oldest stock is used or sold first. It keeps older goods from aging on the shelf and is a common way to value inventory. SKU.io tracks stock in dated cost layers and, when a shipment is fulfilled, consumes the oldest layers first to set the COGS. See How fulfilling moves inventory and realizes COGS.

Financial line (charge line) — A non-product line that adds a cost or fee to the order — shipping, handling, or a miscellaneous charge — with its own tax treatment and accounting code. See Add discounts and charges.

Fulfillable status — A list filter that groups orders by how much of them you can ship right now from stock: all, some, or none. It's derived on the fly from each line's availability, not a stored value. See List columns and filters.

Fulfillment order (FO) — The plannable, per-warehouse intent to ship part of an order: which lines, from which warehouse, by which method, and to which provider. One sales order can have several fulfillment orders (one per warehouse or split). The FO is the plan; the SOF is the shipment that executes it. See Two-tier fulfillment: intent vs execution.

Fulfillment status — One of the three independent status axes on an order (alongside order status and payment status): unfulfilled, partially fulfilled, fulfilled, over-fulfilled, awaiting tracking, awaiting pickup, or out of sync. SKU recomputes it from the order's shipments and lines. See How sales order status works and the status reference.

G

Gift card — A stored-value card sold or redeemed at the point of sale. Selling a gift card is untaxed; redeeming one is a tender type at checkout. See Sell at the point of sale (POS).

GS1 company prefix — The 7–10 digit number GS1 assigns your company when you join. It begins every barcode and SSCC-18 carton number you create, which is how retailers know the carton is yours. See Choose what SPS Commerce sends.

I

Incoming inventory (vs on-hand) — Stock that's on order or in transit and will arrive in the future, as opposed to on-hand inventory, which is physically in your warehouse and available to sell right now.

Incoterm — A standard three-letter trade term (such as FOB or DDP) that spells out, for an international shipment, who pays for freight, insurance, and duties, and exactly where responsibility passes from the seller to the buyer.

Inventory movement — A record of stock entering or leaving a location. Fulfilling a shipment writes negative movements that carry the FIFO cost basis; voiding a shipment reverses them and restores the layers. See How fulfilling moves inventory and realizes COGS.

Invoice — In SKU an invoice is a generated PDF of the order plus its accounting transaction — there is no separate invoice record. Download the PDF and generate the transaction from the order. See Generate invoices, packing slips, and accounting.

L

Landed cost — The true, all-in cost of a product once it reaches you — the purchase price plus freight, duties, insurance, and handling — rather than just the supplier's unit price.

Lead time — How long it takes from placing a purchase order to actually having the stock available to sell, including the supplier's production time and shipping.

Lead time into FBA — How long a shipment takes from where you restock Amazon (a supplier, your own warehouse, a 3PL or AWD) until Amazon has received it, measured from your own inbound shipments. See Plan with lead times into FBA.

Line (sales order line) — A single item on an order: a product, a bundle, or a charge, with its quantity, price, and discount. A line has no status column of its own — its fulfillment state (unfulfilled, partly shipped, fully shipped, backordered) is computed from its quantities. See Manage order lines and the status reference.

Loss event — One loss in Amazon's inventory ledger, with everything tied to it: the payments, settlements, clawbacks and found units that resolve it, and a status from Researching to Found, Reimbursed or Written off. See FBA reimbursement reference.

M

MAP (minimum advertised price) — The lowest price a brand allows sellers to advertise its product at. An offer strictly below it is a MAP break, which brand reports and alerts flag with the sellers involved. See Set MAP prices.

Market estimate — An estimate of how much a listing sold across every seller, worked out from your own units and your share of the Buy Box, and labelled Est. in brand reports. See How market estimates work.

MCF (Multi-Channel Fulfillment) — Amazon's service that ships orders from other channels out of your Amazon (FBA) inventory. In SKU you can create an MCF fulfillment or link an existing one to an order; the units ship from Amazon with no local movement. See Fulfill via Amazon FBA or MCF.

Merge group (sales order merge group) — A set of separate orders combined so they ship together — allowed only when they share the same warehouse, provider, and ship-to address. Each order keeps its own identity and writes tracking back to its own channel. Merge groups are created from the fulfillment flow. See Merge fulfillment orders across different orders.

Merged shipment — One physical shipment that covers several fulfillment orders — from the same order or across merged orders. The fulfillment view flags it so you know the tracking is shared. See Split, move, and merge fulfillments.

MFN (Merchant Fulfillment Network) — Amazon's term for orders you ship yourself rather than via FBA. When you fulfill an MFN order in SKU, SKU pushes the tracking back to Amazon to keep the marketplace order in sync. See How channel orders sync.

MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity) — The smallest quantity a supplier will let you order in a single purchase, whether per product or per order.

Multi-currency (FX snapshot) — An order transacts in the customer's currency, but SKU reports and posts it in your base currency using an exchange rate captured at order time. That snapshot keeps historical orders stable even as rates drift. See How order financials flow to accounting.

N

Need mapping (unmapped line) — A line — usually imported from a channel — whose SKU didn't resolve to a product in SKU. Unmapped lines are highlighted and block fulfillment until you link them to a product. See Manage order lines.

Nominal code — An accounting reference (also called a general-ledger or account code) that tells your bookkeeping system which category a sale or cost belongs to, so amounts land in the right place on your financial reports. See How order financials flow to accounting.

Note (pinned note) — A free-text comment on an order. Pinning a note surfaces it in a banner above the tabs so the whole team sees it. See Add notes, tags, and custom fields.

O

On Account — A point-of-sale tender that records the sale as owed by the customer rather than paid now, leaving an amount due to collect later. See Sell at the point of sale (POS).

On-hand inventory — Stock that's physically present in your warehouse right now and available to sell, as opposed to inventory that's still on order or reserved.

Order link — A stored relationship joining a parent order to a child order it spawned — a dropship, resend, exchange, or merge — so you can trace the family. See Resend and exchange an order.

Order status — The master status axis: draft, reserved, open, closed, or cancelled. A cancelled order is stored as closed with a cancellation timestamp. See How sales order status works and the status reference.

Out of sync — A fulfillment state that means SKU's shipment records and the channel's fulfillments no longer agree — for example a shipment was deleted in SKU but the channel still shows it shipped. It's cleared with the reset-fulfillment-status action. See Void, restore, or reset a shipment.

Outbound serial match mode — The account setting that decides what happens when someone names a serial that can't ship or leave stock: Require exact match blocks the action, Log and allow mismatch records the mismatch and lets it go ahead. See How serial tracking works.

Over-fulfillment — Shipping more of a line than the order called for. SKU flags the order over-fulfilled and closes it, deliberately surfacing the surplus rather than hiding it. See the status reference.

P

Pallet delivery — An Amazon Business checkout option for large, heavy items you ship yourself: the item must arrive on a pallet by freight (LTL), not by parcel. SKU.io marks those orders and items with a Pallet delivery chip and warns you when you fulfill them. See Ship Amazon pallet delivery orders.

Partial fulfillment — Shipping some units or lines now and the rest later. The order stays Open with a partially fulfilled status until everything ships. See Fulfill a sales order.

Pay link — A link you send your customer from a sales order so they can pay it, or a deposit on it, through PayPal on a SKU.io pay page. A link is for a set amount and expires after the number of days you choose. An order has at most one Active link, and the payment is recorded on the order when the customer pays. See Collect payment with a PayPal pay link.

Payment status — The third independent status axis, derived from money taken and refunded: unpaid, partially paid, paid, partially refunded, or refunded. A full refund uniquely also closes the order. See How sales order status works.

Pending inbound — Inventory that has been sent to a fulfillment center (such as Amazon or a 3PL) and is on its way, but hasn't yet been received and made available for sale at that location.

Pick list — A warehouse picking sheet generated from a fulfillment order's lines, telling staff what to pull and from where. Pick lists attach through fulfillment orders, so they exist only once those are created. See Two-tier fulfillment: intent vs execution.

POS (Point of Sale) — SKU's in-store register. A completed POS sale creates a sales order that's already Open and paid, drawing stock from the register's warehouse. See Sell at the point of sale (POS).

Pricing tier — A price level attached to a customer (for example wholesale or retail) that sets the default unit prices when you add that customer's products to an order. See Create a sales order.

PRO number — A freight carrier's tracking number for a shipment it carries (short for progressive number). Retailers expect it on the ship notice and carton labels of freight shipments. See Pack and label SPS Commerce shipments.

Proforma fulfillment order — A placeholder fulfillment order SKU creates when an order is approved, so the fulfillment plan exists before you dispatch anything. See Two-tier fulfillment: intent vs execution.

Proration (tax allocation) — Spreading a shared amount — a whole-order discount, a shipping charge, or its tax — fairly across the individual lines, usually by each line's value, so every unit carries its correct share. See Add discounts and charges.

Proration / allocation — Spreading a shared cost — such as freight or a discount on a whole shipment — across the individual product lines in fair proportion, usually by each line's value or quantity, so every unit carries its correct share.

Purchase order (PO) — A formal document you send a supplier to buy goods, listing the products, quantities, and agreed prices. It's the official record of what you ordered and the starting point for receiving and invoicing.

Q

Quarantine — Holding specific serial numbers back so they can't be picked, allocated or shipped, for example during a recall or inspection. The units still count as on hand; releasing them puts them back In Stock. See Quarantine and release serials.

Quote — A pre-order pricing document. Converting a quote snapshots its lines and pricing into a draft sales order while keeping the two linked for provenance. Quotes share the sales order list, accessed through the quote filter. See Convert between orders and quotes.

R

Receipt / goods receipt — The record you create when a shipment physically arrives, noting what and how much you actually received against a purchase order.

Reconcile — To compare two or more records covering the same thing — for example an invoice against a receipt — and resolve any differences so they agree.

Register session — A cashier's open shift at the point of sale, tied to one warehouse and an opening cash float. Closing the session reconciles the counted cash against what SKU expected. See Sell at the point of sale (POS).

Reimbursed-unit COGS — The cost of FBA units Amazon paid for, moved out of the FBA loss account into its own cost of goods sold account, one journal per settlement period. It puts the cost next to the reimbursement income on your P&L. See Post reimbursed-unit COGS.

Resend — A free replacement order created from an existing one, for example to re-ship a lost or damaged parcel. SKU clones the chosen lines at zero value (the number carries an -R- marker before a date stamp, for example, SO1234-R-20260710) and links it to the original. See Resend and exchange an order.

Reserve (reservation) — Committing on-hand stock to an order or line ahead of shipping. Reserving an order marks it Reserved; reserving stock to a line creates an Allocated allocation. Releasing a reservation frees the stock back to the pool. See Approve, reserve, and allocate stock.

Return receipt — The record created when returned goods physically arrive. It restocks inventory according to the disposition policy and can spawn a sales credit. It's the step that moves stock, as opposed to money. See Returns, credits, and refunds.

Routing rule — A per-warehouse setting that sends one shipping method to a different provider than the warehouse's default — for example FedEx parcels to a 3PL while everything else goes to a delivery carrier. A per-order override beats a routing rule, and a routing rule beats the warehouse default. See Dispatch to a fulfillment provider.

RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) — The document that authorizes which lines of an order may be returned. It's the first step in the returns pipeline, before the goods arrive (return receipt) and before money goes back (sales credit). See Process returns: RMAs and credits.

S

Sales credit (credit note) — A record that puts money back to the customer against specific order lines — as a refund, store credit, or an offset — and posts its own accounting transaction. A credit can be issued with or without a physical return, and issuing one alone doesn't restock inventory. See Process returns: RMAs and credits.

Sales order (SO) — The central record of a sale: who is buying, what, at what price, and where it ships. Its lifecycle runs create → approve → fulfill → invoice → close. See the sales orders overview.

Sales order fulfillment (SOF) — One executed shipment: the record that actually moves inventory, carries the tracking, and writes back to the channel. A SOF executes a fulfillment order (the plan); one fulfillment order can produce one or more SOFs. See Two-tier fulfillment: intent vs execution.

Sales rep — The salesperson credited with an order. SKU inherits the customer's default sales rep when you pick a customer and never overrides one you've already set. See Create a sales order.

Sandbox — PayPal's testing environment. A PayPal account connected with Sandbox keys takes test payments only, and no real money moves; its pay pages show a Test payment (sandbox) notice. Use Live keys to take real payments. See How PayPal works.

Saved view — A named combination of columns, filters, and sort that you can save and switch back to from the list. See List columns and filters.

SCAC (Standard Carrier Alpha Code) — A carrier's 2–4 letter code, such as UPSN for UPS or ODFL for Old Dominion. Retailers identify the carrier on a ship notice and carton label by its SCAC. See Pack and label SPS Commerce shipments.

Serial generation mode — How a serial-tracked product gets its serial numbers when stock arrives: Manual (you enter one per unit), Auto (SKU.io generates them from a format such as {sku}-{seq:6}), or None (typed by hand). See Turn on serial tracking.

Serial number — An identifier for one physical unit of a product. With serial tracking on, SKU.io records a serial for every unit received and follows it through shipments, transfers, returns and builds, so you can see where any unit is and who received it. See Serial Numbers.

Shipping provider — A carrier or 3PL integration — Starshipit, ShipStation, ShipHero, Trackstar, Shipfusion, VeraCore, Shippit, or Pinnacle (MWD) — that a fulfillment is dispatched to. The provider ships the parcel and returns tracking, which SKU records on the shipment. See Fulfill a sales order.

Short-close — Deliberately closing a purchase order line for fewer units than you originally ordered, when you accept the supplier won't send the rest. It lowers the expected quantity so the line can be considered complete.

Short-ship — Shipping fewer units than a line ordered and leaving the rest. Unlike over-fulfillment, a short-ship keeps the order partially fulfilled rather than closing it. See the status reference.

Split — Dividing work so it can ship separately: splitting a fulfillment order into more than one shipment, splitting a line's quantity, or splitting a line across warehouses. See Split, move, and merge fulfillments.

SSCC-18 (Serial Shipping Container Code) — The 18-digit number that identifies one carton or pallet worldwide, built from your GS1 company prefix and never reused. It's printed as a barcode on the carton's GS1-128 label and listed on the ship notice, so the retailer can receive the carton by scanning it. See Pack and label SPS Commerce shipments.

Store credit — A balance held in a customer's wallet that can be applied to an order as a form of payment, or issued back to them from a refund. See Record payments and apply store credit.

Subscription edition — The recurring product instance a line is pinned to when it comes from a subscription. Writing the line adjusts that edition's consumed quantity. See Manage order lines.

T

Tag — An organizational label you attach to orders to group and filter them. Tags are purely organizational — they have no effect on fulfillment or finances. See Add notes, tags, and custom fields.

Target Stock Days — In the demand-planning forecast, how many days of stock you want to have on hand for a product. The forecast recommends ordering enough to reach this cover after accounting for lead time and existing stock.

Tender — A method of payment taken at the point of sale — cash, card, store credit, gift card, or On Account. A split payment combines more than one tender on a single sale. See Sell at the point of sale (POS).

Tracked job — A long-running background operation — a bulk delete, import, or email — that reports its progress in the job tray so you can watch it finish. See Bulk actions on the sales orders list.

Trading partner — A retailer you exchange EDI documents with. Each has a trading partner ID, its address on the EDI network, which shows on every document it sends or receives. See How SPS Commerce EDI works.

Two-tier fulfillment — SKU's model of splitting shipping into a plan (the fulfillment order) and its execution (the shipment, or SOF). Understanding the two objects explains why an order can be dispatched but not yet shipped. See Two-tier fulfillment: intent vs execution.

V

Vendor credit — An amount a supplier owes back to you — for over-billing, returns, or damaged goods — that offsets what you owe them, much like a refund applied to your account rather than paid in cash.

Vendor deposit — Money you pay a supplier up front, before goods are delivered, as a prepayment against a purchase order. It's later applied to the final invoice.

Void (vs delete a shipment) — Two ways to reverse a shipment. Voiding soft-cancels it: the rows stay for audit and inventory is reversed. Deleting hard-removes it. A shipment already shipped at a carrier needs a force-void; some shipments (for example MCF or a merge group) can't be voided. A void can later be restored. See Void, restore, or reset a shipment.

W

Walk-in order — An order with no saved customer, typical of a counter or point-of-sale sale. SKU allows a blank or inline (unsaved) customer. See Create a sales order.

Warehouse lock — A safeguard that freezes a line's or a shipment's warehouse once fulfillment has started, so stock already committed or shipped can't be silently moved to another location. Attempts to change it are refused. See Warehouse routing and the warehouse lock.

WFS (Walmart Fulfillment Services) — Walmart's outsourced fulfillment. You send inventory to Walmart, and Walmart stores it, then picks, packs, and ships your Walmart orders. Like FBA, WFS units ship outside SKU.io with no local inventory movement. See Amazon FBA, MCF, and externally fulfilled orders.

Writeback (channel writeback) — Pushing a shipment's tracking and fulfillment back to the marketplace or storefront the order came from, so the channel order shows as fulfilled. SKU's shipment is authoritative for shipped state. See How channel orders sync.