When a customer completes payment for their order during checkout, Shopify generates the order. If the customer encounters a post-purchase upsell, the order is marked with a fulfillment status of On Hold.
The On Hold status is assigned because the customer may accept a post-purchase upsell, potentially adding an item to the order. This status signals that the order should not be fulfilled immediately as additional item(s) could be included.
Releasing post-purchase fulfillment holds
Once the fulfillment hold is released, the order fulfillment status will change to Unfulfilled.
The order hold will automatically release in the following scenarios:
If the customer clicks Accept or Decline on all post-purchase offers.
If 60 minutes has passed since the order's creation.
The table below outlines the timeline for the release of post-purchase fulfillment holds across different customer scenarios.
Case | Order fulfillment status | Fulfillment hold release timeline | Number of transactions/ payments | Order edited after creation? |
Customer did not see post-purchase offer | Unfulfilled | N/A | 1 | NO |
Customer sees a post-purchase offer and declines it | On Hold | Hold is released as soon as customer declines the offer | 1 | NO |
Customer sees a post-purchase upsell and closes browser tab | On Hold | Hold is released after 60 minutes ( 1 hour ) | 1 | NO |
Customer sees a post-purchase upsell and accepts | On Hold | Hold is released as soon as customer accepts the offer | 2 ( or 3 if customer accepted both upsell offers ) | YES |