Remove from On Hold

Pre-order orders are often kept on a fulfillment hold so they do not ship before your stock arrives. When you are ready to ship, you release the hold: for many orders at once from Timesact, or for one order in Shopify. Releasing is the step that lets a held pre-order become fulfillable.

What "on hold" means

On the order in Shopify, the unfulfilled items show an On hold status. A hold is a deliberate block that stops the items from being fulfilled, so a pre-order does not go out early. Pre-orders arrive On hold when the template's Shipping is A set time from checkout or A time range from checkout, or when the template uses Don't use a Shopify purchase option with Fulfillment status set to On hold. You, another app or an automation can also add a hold. While an order or fulfillment is on hold, you cannot fulfill it or change its status. You have to release the hold first.

A hold is about fulfillment only and doesn't change when you are paid. When the customer is charged is set under Functionality settings, Billing in the customer experience template: with Full amount the customer pays the whole price at checkout, exactly like a normal order. Releasing a hold doesn't take a payment on its own. For each option, see Billing and Split payments.

Changing pre-orders to Unfulfilled

Pre-orders can also arrive as Scheduled, which means they carry a ship date. If your stock arrives early, or your warehouse only picks up Unfulfilled orders, you can move them yourself.

For orders you have already received, in your Shopify admin go to Orders and open the order:

1. If the pre-order line says Scheduled, click the three-dot menu on that line and choose Fulfill early. The line moves to Unfulfilled.
2. If it says On hold, click Release hold in the On hold section (see Release the hold below).

Do this only when the stock is in hand, because both steps make the order ready to ship. A Scheduled order you leave as it is becomes fulfillable on its own when its ship date arrives.

For orders that come in from now on, open the customer experience template in the Timesact app, go to Functionality settings → Shipping and choose As soon as possible, then click Save. New pre-orders then arrive Unfulfilled. If the template uses Don't use a Shopify purchase option, set Fulfillment status to Unfulfilled instead. As soon as possible has no date to show, so if your product page message uses {{shippingDate}}, replace it with the timing in your own words. Orders you already received keep their status.

How an order gets put on hold (for reference)

If you ever need to place one on hold yourself:

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Orders and open the order.
2. In the unfulfilled items section, click the three-dot menu, then Hold fulfillment.
3. Choose a reason and apply it.

Release the hold

If the order still has a balance in its Payment pending section and you want it paid before it ships, collect the balance first (see Capture Split payment Early), then release the hold. If the template charges the balance When you fulfill the order, you can release and fulfill straight away: the balance is charged once the order is fully fulfilled.

For a single order:

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Orders and open the order you want to release.
2. In the On hold section, click Release hold.
3. If the fulfillment has more than one hold, select the ones you want to release, then click Release.

When the hold is released, the order's fulfillment status returns to its previous state, usually Unfulfilled. It is now fulfillable.

You can also do this from the Shopify mobile app: open the order, and in the on-hold section tap Release (selecting specific holds first if there are several).

Printing a packing slip for a pre-order

If you try to print a packing slip for a pre-order before it is released, Shopify leaves it off the slip: an order with only pre-order items can return an error, and a mixed order prints only its in-stock lines. That is expected, Shopify only adds an item to a packing slip once it is fulfillable, and a pre-order that is On hold or Scheduled is held back until its ship date.

To print the slip now, make the item fulfillable first:

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Orders and open the order.
2. If the item shows On hold, click Release hold (the step above).
3. If it instead shows Scheduled (it has a ship date but no hold), open the three-dot menu on that line and choose Fulfill early. The line moves to Unfulfilled.
4. Click Print packing slip. The item now appears on the slip.

Do this only when you are actually ready to pick and pack, because releasing or fulfilling early makes the order shippable. If you would rather pre-orders stay Unfulfilled from the start, so slips always print without this step, set the shipping date to As soon as possible in the customer experience template (Functionality settings → Shipping). The trade-off is that the order then will not carry a Scheduled or On hold status.

Buying a shipping label on a mixed order

Shopify will not sell a label for a fulfillment it is holding, so on an order carrying an in-stock item and a pre-order item the label button stays out of reach while the pre-order line is On hold or Scheduled. Unticking the pre-order item on the fulfil screen does not help, because the hold sits on the fulfillment rather than on the tick box.

Ship the in-stock part on its own instead. In Shopify admin → Orders, open the order and look for the in-stock item in its own Unfulfilled section, then fulfil it and buy the label there. If both items sit together in one held section, open it, click Release hold, then fulfil only the in-stock line and leave the pre-order line until your stock arrives. Do that at the point you are ready to pick and pack, because releasing the hold makes that whole fulfillment shippable.

If your template uses Don't use a Shopify purchase option with Fulfillment status set to On hold, choose Hold pre-order products so in-stock products in the same order can be fulfilled now.

Releasing holds at scale

When a drop lands, release many pre-orders at once from Timesact:

1. In Timesact, go to Analytics and, under Pre-order, click Sales.
2. In the orders table on Pre-order sales, click the Hold tab.
3. Select the orders you are ready to ship.
4. Click Release holds, then click Release holds again to confirm.
5. The result shows Released, Skipped and Failed counts.

This releases the holds that come from your Timesact pre-orders: the ones Shopify places for A set time from checkout and A time range from checkout, and the ones Timesact places with Fulfillment status set to On hold. Holds you or another app placed stay as they are, so release those on the order in Shopify. To release holds automatically on a schedule, you can also use Shopify Flow's "Release fulfillment order holds" action.

Good to know

• Releasing the hold does not fulfill the order. It only makes it fulfillable, you still fulfill it as the next step.
• Only release when you are actually ready to ship. Releasing holds before stock is in hand means those orders can then be fulfilled and shipped early.
• You cannot mark an order or fulfillment as fulfilled while any hold is still on it, release all holds first.

Related

• Why pre-orders are held and how the shipping date works: Shipping dates

Updated on: 11/11/2026