When you view items in the Backorder tab, you are seeing all sales order line items that still need to be fulfilled.
This view represents your open demand — items customers have ordered but have not yet been fully shipped.
What Qualifies as a Backorder Item
For a line item to appear in the Backorder view, all of the following conditions must be met.
Active order (not deleted or archived)
Parent order is not shipped, completed, fulfilled, cancelled, void, or failed
Line item is not marked as ignored
Line item is not flagged to skip auto-fulfillment
Line item is not an adjustment (discounts, fees, etc.)
Line item has unfulfilled quantity
Includes completely unfulfilled items
Includes partially fulfilled items (fulfilled quantity < ordered quantity)
What This Means in Practice
Scenario | Included in Backorder? |
New order with no fulfillment orders created | ✅ Yes |
Order with a fulfillment order, but item not fully allocated | ✅ Yes |
Order where 5 of 10 units have been fulfilled | ✅ Yes (remaining 5 units show as backorder) |
Order already shipped or completed | ❌ No |
Cancelled or voided order | ❌ No |
Adjustment or discount line item | ❌ No |
Item manually marked as ignored | ❌ No |
Use Cases:
Procurement Planning
Understand what inventory you still need to purchase or manufacture based on outstanding demand.
Fulfillment Gap Analysis
Identify items that could not be fulfilled due to stock shortages or allocation issues.
Customer Communication
Quickly see what items are still outstanding when responding to customer inquiries about their orders.