Allocation, hold & backorder statuses & fields

This page is the lookup for three related records that commit and reserve stock behind an order: the allocation (which claims stock or demand for a line), the stock hold (which fences physical units off from selling), and the backorder queue that ranks demand waiting on supply. It defines every allocation status, every derived hold state, the fields each record carries, the columns and filters on the Backorders page, and the account-level backorder settings.

For the model behind these records — how demand becomes an allocation, how a backorder gets covered by a purchase order and then released — read the concept page Allocations & backorders. To work with them in the app, see Work the backorder queue, Browse allocations & pin stock to bins, and Place & manage stock holds.

There is no "reserved" inventory status

SKU.io has no "reserved" allocation status and no "reserved" stock bucket. Demand and stock are tracked through the five allocation statuses below, the stock states (Available, Allocated, On Hold, Non-Sellable), and stock holds. If you are looking for where committed stock lives, it's the Allocated status and the Allocated stock bucket — see the stock states & fields reference.

Allocation statuses

An allocation is a single row that ties a quantity of a product at a warehouse to a demand link — a sales order line, a warehouse-transfer line, or a manufacturing-order component. Its status moves through five values. Three are active (they represent live demand: Planned, Awaiting Receipt, Allocated); two are terminal (Fulfilled, Cancelled). Only Allocated claims physical on-hand stock and reduces Available.

Status	Active?	Claims on-hand?	Meaning
Planned	Yes	No	Demand with no stock and no purchase-order coverage yet — a true shortage.
Awaiting Receipt	Yes	No	A backorder bound to an incoming purchase-order line that will cover it.
Allocated	Yes	Yes	On-hand stock committed to the line. The only status that reduces Available.
Fulfilled	No (terminal)	No	The linked shipment shipped. Can't transition further.
Cancelled	No (terminal)	No	No longer needed. Can't transition further.

The rest of this section documents each status and its transitions.

Planned

A Planned row is demand with no on-hand stock and no purchase-order coverage yet — a real, uncovered backorder. It carries a priority (its rank in the backorder queue) and a supplier, so you can see who to reorder from.

• Supplier is backfilled automatically. When a Planned row is created without a supplier, SKU.io fills in the product's default supplier. The same backfill runs on update, so a row that transitions into Planned from a status that didn't need a supplier still gets one.
• It marks the order line as backordered. Any Planned (or Awaiting Receipt) row sets has_backorder = true on the linked sales order line, which is what surfaces the line as backordered on the order and blocks the order from closing.

Transitions from Planned:

To	Trigger	What happens
Awaiting Receipt	A purchase-order line is linked (coverage set)	The row binds to that PO line; it stays a backorder.
Allocated	Stock arrives and the backorder is released	The row claims the freed on-hand stock; priority is cleared.
Cancelled	The demand is cancelled	Terminal.

Unreserving reverts an allocation to Planned

Unreserving an Allocated row (freeing its stock back to the pool) reverts it to Planned and assigns it a fresh priority at the back of the queue, so it re-enters the backorder pipeline rather than jumping the line.

Awaiting Receipt

An Awaiting Receipt row is a backorder that a purchase-order line is expected to cover. It still counts as an active backorder — the stock hasn't landed yet. Its ETA derives from the covering purchase order or its inbound shipment.

• Tight coverage marks a manual link created in the PO Builder, as opposed to an automatic one. Tight (manual) links are protected from automatic re-shuffling when priorities are reordered — see Preserve manual PO links.
• Coverage is kept in sync with PO capacity. If a covering PO line's quantity shrinks below what it was covering, SKU.io reconciles the excess — the uncovered remainder reverts to Planned with its PO link cleared so it can be re-covered.

Transitions from Awaiting Receipt:

To	Trigger	What happens
Allocated	The covering PO is received	The PO link is nulled and the row claims the received stock.
Planned	Coverage is cleared	The PO link is removed; the row is an uncovered shortage again.
Cancelled	The demand is cancelled	Terminal.

Allocated

An Allocated row is on-hand stock committed to the line. It's the only status that reduces Available — the stock is spoken for but still physically in the warehouse until the order ships. Its priority is cleared (it's no longer waiting in the queue).

• Release source. When an Allocated row is reached by releasing a backorder against received stock, it records where the stock came from — the FIFO layer or receipt. A row that records a release source never also has a covering PO line: it represents stock that already landed, not stock still on order.
• It can be pinned to a bin. An allocation can be pinned to a specific bin — a hard reservation of those exact units. Bin pinning is currently API-only; there is no in-app control for it yet (SKU-8191).
• It can move to another line. An Allocated row can be reassigned to a different sales order line as a conserved swap under a pool lock; the source line falls back to a Planned backorder if it still needs the stock.

Transitions from Allocated:

To	Trigger	What happens
Fulfilled	The linked fulfillment ships	Terminal; records the fulfillment time.
Planned	Unreserve	Frees the on-hand stock back to the pool; the row rejoins the queue with a fresh priority.
Cancelled	The demand is cancelled	Frees the on-hand pool and queues a re-release into other backorders.

Fulfilled

Fulfilled is terminal. It's reached when the fulfillment linked to the allocation ships, and can't transition further. On the backorder queue it shows under the Released (Fulfilled) status view. Return-to-vendor (vendor-credit) restock lines fulfill from Planned or Allocated.

• Reversible only by voiding. Reverting a fulfillment (voiding the shipment) reverses the allocation out of Fulfilled.
• Partial fulfillment splits the row. Shipping part of an allocation splits it, keeping the unshipped remainder in its prior status.

Cancelled

Cancelled is terminal. It records the cancellation time and can't transition further. Cancelling an allocation runs cleanup:

• Priorities close up. Later priorities are decremented so the queue has no gap where the cancelled row was.
• Freed on-hand is re-released. If the cancelled row was Allocated, the freed on-hand stock is queued for re-release into other backorders for the same product and warehouse, so a downstream Planned row can claim it instead of stranding.
• The backorder flag clears on the linked line once no Planned or Awaiting Receipt rows remain for it.

Cancelling on-hand stock triggers a re-fill

When you cancel an Allocated row, the stock it was holding is released back to the pool and re-offered to other waiting backorders. If that re-fill didn't fire, freshly created Planned rows for the same product could sit stranded even though stock had just been freed. That re-fill is guaranteed for cancellations today.

Stock hold states

A stock hold (also called a reservation in the route and API naming — the hold routes take a {reservation} parameter) fences a quantity of physical stock off from selling — for quality control, a customer hold, seasonal set-aside, and more. See Place & manage stock holds.

Holds have no status column. Their state is derived from whether they've been released and how much:

State	Condition	Meaning
Active	Not yet released	Fully holding its quantity; stock is in the On Hold bucket.
Partially Released	Not fully released, but some quantity has been	Some units released back to sellable, the rest still held.
Released	Fully released	No stock held.
Expired	Active and past its expiry date	Past its expiry, but still holding until released (see below).

How release works:

• Full release records who released it, when, and why, and moves the remaining held quantity into the released total. The state becomes Released.
• Partial release reduces the held quantity by the amount released and adds it to the released total, without closing the hold. The state becomes Partially Released.
• Releasing or deleting an active hold dispatches a tracked job to release inventory allocations, so the freed stock can immediately resolve waiting backorders.

Expired holds aren't released automatically by time alone

A hold past its expiry date is Expired but still holds its stock — expiry is a signal, not an automatic release. The units return to sellable only when the scheduled release sweep runs, which records the release reason as Auto-released: reservation expired. Until then, expired holds keep their stock in On Hold. The Backorders and stock-hold pages surface expiring-soon holds (within seven days) so you can act before they lapse.

What an allocation records

You never edit an allocation directly — they're created and moved through their statuses by the order, transfer, and backorder engines. These are the details each one carries.

Detail	What it holds
ID	The allocation's identifier.
Product	The product being allocated.
Warehouse	The warehouse the stock or demand sits at.
Source	The demand it covers — a sales order line, warehouse transfer line, manufacturing order component line, or FBA inbound plan item — shown with a label (Sales Order, Warehouse Transfer, Transfer Receipt, Manufacturing Order, or FBA Inbound Plan), a link to that record, and its reference number, for example #SO-1042 or #MO-000003.
Date	The demand's date — the sales order's order date, the transfer's date, or the manufacturing order's scheduled start.
Quantity	The allocated quantity.
Status	The allocation status.
Priority	The row's rank in the backorder queue. Cleared once Allocated.
Supplier	The supplier to reorder from — filled in from the product's default supplier on Planned and Awaiting Receipt rows.
Covering PO line	The purchase order line covering this demand, when the row is Awaiting Receipt.
Tight coverage	Whether the PO link was made by hand in the PO Builder, which protects it from automatic re-shuffling.
Released from	The FIFO layer or receipt an Allocated row drew its stock from. A row has either this or a covering PO line, never both.
Pinned bin	The bin this allocation is reserved to, when it's a hard reservation to a specific location.
Fulfilled / Cancelled	When the row reached Fulfilled or Cancelled.
Created / Updated	Record timestamps.

Allocations are activity-logged: their changes appear in the linked sales order's, transfer's, or product's history feed.

What a stock hold records

Each stock hold carries these details.

Detail	What it holds
ID	The hold's identifier.
Product	The product being held.
Warehouse	The warehouse the held stock sits at.
Quantity	The quantity currently held.
Released quantity	How much has been released back to sellable so far — this is what puts a hold into Partially Released.
Reason	Why the stock is held, with a display label — see the note below.
Notes	Free-text notes about the hold.
Expires	An optional expiry date, which drives the Expired and expiring-soon surfaces.
Released / Released by / Release reason	When a hold was fully released, who released it, and why (for example, Auto-released: reservation expired). Empty while the hold is Active or Partially Released.
Created by	The user who placed the hold.
Created / Updated	Record timestamps.
Archived	Set when the hold is archived.

The reason is a combobox, not a fixed list

When you place a hold, Reason is a combobox: pick a suggested value or type your own. The suggested values are Quality Control, Customer Hold, Seasonal, Promotional, Internal Use, Damaged, Pending Inspection, Expired / Near Expiry, and Other. If you type a custom reason, it's displayed exactly as you typed it. When the reason is Other, Notes is required. The reason filter on the stock-holds list is built from the distinct reasons actually in use, so custom reasons remain filterable.

Backorder queue columns

The Backorders page (Inventory → Backorders, the allocation pipeline) lists allocations as a work queue, ranked by priority. Each row is one allocation. See Work the backorder queue for the tasks.

Column	What it shows
ID	The allocation's identifier.
Status	The allocation status label.
Priority	The row's rank in the queue. Lower runs first.
SKU	The product's SKU (links to the product).
Product Name	The product name.
Sales Order	The source order number (links to the order).
Backordered Qty	The quantity on this row.
Released Qty	The same quantity, shown only when the row is Allocated or Fulfilled (that is, once the backorder has been released). Zero otherwise.
Supplier	The supplier to reorder from.
Covered by PO	A chip for the covering purchase order, with a lock icon when the link is a manual (tight) coverage. Blank for uncovered rows.
ETA	The covering supply's estimated arrival, as a chip colored by ETA state (see below), with a split-coverage icon when demand is split across sources.
Other WH Stock	A popover of the same product's available stock in other warehouses (only warehouses with stock above zero).
In Transit	A popover of in-transit stock for the product.
Backorder Date	When the backorder row was created.
Order Date	The source order's date.
Scheduled At	The supplier's next backorder schedule date.
Created At / Updated At	Record timestamps.

ETA state drives the color and text of the ETA chip:

ETA state	Meaning
Has ETA	A covering PO or inbound shipment has a future date.
Late ETA	The covering date is already in the past.
Missing (No PO)	No purchase order covers the row yet.
Missing (No Date)	A PO covers the row, but it has no delivery date.

Filters above the queue: a Status tab set (All, Active, Released (All), Released (Fulfilled), Released (Submitted), Released (Unfulfilled)), plus Covered by PO, ETA state (Has ETA / Late ETA / Missing), Other WH Stock, and Supplier — combined with the advanced-filter builder and saved views.

"Other WH Stock" and "In Transit" are included in the export

The Other WH Stock and In Transit columns are populated in both the on-screen popovers and the backorder Export (XLSX/CSV) — each row carries the same product's total available stock in other warehouses and its in-transit total. For the per-warehouse breakdown behind those totals, see the per-warehouse stock view.

Backorder settings

The Settings tab on the Backorders page controls how the queue prioritizes and resolves backorders account-wide. These persist to the sales-order settings group; Save sends only the fields you changed, and Discard reverts unsaved edits.

Setting	Values	What it controls
Backorder Priority Method	Sales Order Date (FIFO) (default) / Backorder Creation Order	How the queue is ordered. FIFO prioritizes older orders first; creation order uses the sequence in which backorders were created.
Preserve Manual PO Links on Priority Reorder	On (default) / Off	When on, manual (tight) PO links survive a priority reorder — only automatic links are recalculated.
Auto-Resolve Backorders	On (default) / Off	When on, stock arriving from PO receipts, adjustments, and transfers automatically releases matching backorders. When off, you release them by hand.
Auto-Link POs to Backorders	On (default) / Off	When on, PO lines are linked to backorders automatically. When off, only manual links from the PO Builder are created.

These settings back the queue's action dialogs

The same settings are surfaced by the queue's action dialogs — the Reset Priorities dialog options and the Unreserve action's disable auto-release toggle write to these same fields, so a one-off choice in a dialog and the persistent setting stay consistent.

Next steps

• Work the backorder queue / allocation pipeline — release, cover, reorder, and reset priorities.
• Browse allocations & pin stock to bins — inspect and hard-reserve allocations.
• Place & manage stock holds — fence and release physical stock.
• Allocations & backorders — the concept behind these records.
• Stock states and the stock states & fields reference — where allocated and held stock sit in the buckets.