Re: fulfillable_quantity is 0 on creation

Why are some orders showing fulfillable quantity as 0 upon creation?

tjohnson1
Shopify Partner
9 0 1

We are a 3PL who handle fulfillment for multiple clients who use Shopify.  Recently we had an uptick of orders with fulfillable_quantity is 0 on creation.  Once day had over 100 orders like this.
We setup each client with an orders/create webhook sending us the order upon creation.  But we are seeing on some orders that fulfillable_quantity is 0 on creation.  This shouldn't be possible.  The orders have no fulfillment, refunds or changes (at least not yet).  If we delay an hour or more and use the API to repull it, some of them still show 0 but other orders have changed to have the correct value.  There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to when Shopify corrects them.  If we wait long enough, sometimes 4 or more hours it will change to have the correct value.
The only thing online I found that might explain this is something about "upselling" causing the order to have the fulfillment status as being On hold, which is mechant-facing and is only viewable in the Admin. But when we look, we don't see this at all.  From what I read, the "On hold" logic should only send us the order once it's taken off On hold, but we are receiving it right away.  What is considered "upselling"?  Can this feature be disabled by the client?

Our customers tried asking support but got no useful feedback. Whatever the cause is, this is extremely bad, since we aren't fulfilling the orders, properly and/or timely.  We can't use quantity for some clients, because they may have changes after the fact that have refunds or other changes to the order.  Fulfillable quantity should only be 0 if the client doesn't need anything fulfilled, either fulfilled, refunded or they changed the quantity.

I have logs showing what the contents of orders at different times and see it change after the fact for no reason as I looked online and saw no events after creation for these orders.  What is causing these orders to be 0.

Reply 1 (1)

tjohnson1
Shopify Partner
9 0 1

I found a place on Shopify where I can ask a question (https://help.shopify.com/en/search/01hcg3y7ezk0kern7eysm39g9p ).  when I asked, "fulfillable_quantity = 0", it responded with the following: "When the fulfillable quantity is 0 in Shopify, it means the product is out of stock. Shopify won't allow customers to purchase that item until you adjust the inventory levels. More info here."
The issue is client may have subscription orders or want to do preorders.  Also, some products may be "Kitted on Demand", therefore no inventory exists at the warehouse ahead of time.  If an order exists, we need to know the fulfillable quantity (quantity - minus any refunds (etc.)) independent of what the current Inventory level is.  Inventory level should not affect the fulfillable_quantity sent on an order either thru the API or webhooks.  At best, inventory level should prohibit new orders from being placed from the store for those items, and that is it.  Once the order is, created inventory level shouldn't affect what is returned.