1. Order Status and behavior
2. Process Orders preferences

Order Status and behavior

Order status is affected by the Process Orders setting on each Item.

Insufficient Inventory: contains one or more items that cannot be fulfilled from a single warehouse.

Pre-Order: contains one or more items with "Process Orders" turned OFF. The Pre-Order status is not contingent upon an item's stock level.

Pre-Order takes priority over Insufficient Inventory. For example: If Order Items are both out of stock and not set to Process Orders, the status will be Pre-Order. If Process Orders is turned ON for that item, the order will automatically move into Insufficient Inventory.

Cases in which you may want to turn Process Orders OFF:

• Whiplash doesn't have stock yet, but you're selling the item in your store as a PreOrder. 
• Whiplash does have stock, but the item is not yet released. You would typically use this in conjunction with a Street Date.

Process Orders preferences

Item Level Process Orders setting

If "Process Orders" is ON, orders containing the item will ship. If "Process Orders" is OFF, we will not batch or ship orders containing the Item. This setting is located on the Orders tab of the Item Details page.

Account Level Process Orders management

These settings are found under General Preferences.

If "Whiplash won't manage Process Orders" is selected, the Customer is responsible for managing the Process Orders for each Item.

"Whiplash will automatically turn ON Process Orders when an item is received, and turn it OFF when an item sells out."  activates the following hourly tasks:

1. When an item goes out of stock, we turn "Process orders" OFF.
2. When an out-of-stock item is received, we turn"Process orders" ON.

"Whiplash will automatically turn ON Process Orders only the first time an item is received" will cause Orders to process as soon as stock is received for the first time, but not again.