Partial deliveries and backorders

Teillieferung is the normal case in B2B, not the exception. A buyer needs the six fittings today and can wait for the other four. Handling that well is a competitive advantage; handling it in a spreadsheet beside the shop is how quantities get shipped twice.

The arithmetic

Every position carries four numbers, and every partial anything is arithmetic on them:

The open quantity of a position is:

quantity − quantity_shipped − quantity_cancelled

That is what a shipment may still take. There is no separate backorder record to keep in sync — the remainder is what the subtraction says, which is why the two numbers can never drift apart.

Ship a partial delivery

1. Open the order under Order Management › Orders.
2. Select Create shipment.
3. Enter the quantity per position that is actually going. Positions you leave at zero stay open.
4. Enter the carrier and the tracking code.
5. Confirm.

The shipment draws its own number from the delivery range and appears on the Fulfilment tab. Each line's quantity_shipped goes up, and the order moves to in_fulfillment / partial.

Repeat for the next delivery. When the last open quantity ships, the order reaches fulfilled and completes — subject to your completion setting.

What a backorder is here

There is no backorder object. A position with an open quantity is the backorder, and your open backorder list is the filter fulfillment_status = partial on the order list, plus placed orders that have not started.

That is a feature rather than a shortcut: a backorder that lives as a subtraction on the order cannot disagree with the order.

What decides whether a backorder can exist at all is the stock system's backorder policy — deny, allow, or allow only for flagged articles. See Stock, locations and availability.

Closing the remainder

Sometimes the rest is never coming: the manufacturer discontinued the article, or the buyer no longer wants it. Do not leave the order open.

Use Cancel positions on the Overview tab to cancel the open quantity — 4 of 10 on position 20. The cancelled quantity counts as settled, so the order becomes fulfilled and completes. See Cancel or change an order.

Freight on a split order

The order's shipping_total was computed once, at place-time, for one delivery. Splitting it into three does not recompute it, and it should not — the buyer agreed to a total.

What you charge for the extra freight is a commercial decision your accounting makes, not something the order does on its own. Decide the policy once:

Whichever you choose, write it in the order confirmation. A surprise second freight charge is a support case.

Telling the buyer

Each shipment carries a carrier and a tracking code, and the tracking link is built from the carrier's own URL template — you do not paste a URL onto every shipment. A carrier with no template (a pallet forwarder, typically) produces no link rather than a dead one.

Use a customer-visible comment to explain the split. "Positions 10 and 20 ship today, position 30 on 14 October" is worth more than three tracking mails with no context.

What to check

After a partial shipment, on the Overview tab:

• The shipped quantity per line matches the delivery note.
• The open quantity is what you expect to send next.
• fulfillment_status is partial, and the lifecycle is in_fulfillment.
• The shipment is on the Fulfilment tab with its own number.

If the order still reads placed after a shipment, the shipment was not recorded through the platform. Someone shipped from the warehouse system and the order never heard about it — see Orders that get stuck.

Next

• Returns and credit notes — when goods come back.
• Manage stock day to day — what a shipment does to your stock.