Shipment Lifecycle, Evidence and Correction Workflows

This guide explains what a Shipment record means in Parcel Pilot, when it counts as active operational evidence, and which correction workflow to use when something has gone wrong.

If you need the normal outbound workflow for creating a shipment, use Shipments — Create, Edit & Delete. This page is for shipment evidence and correction decisions after or around that workflow.

If your task is specifically This dispatched order is wrong. How do I correct it?, start with Correcting a dispatched order.

Key idea

A Shipment is not just a tracking row.

Use this guide when the question is:

• What does a Shipment prove?
• When should I use Fulfilment Repair?
• Should I cancel, reverse, or delete this shipment?

For normal warehouse dispatches it is the operational evidence that:

• a dispatch was recorded
• the shipped quantity was tied to order lines
• inventory deduction and reservation clearing were linked to that dispatch

Parcel Pilot keeps Shipment rows for audit history even when the current operational meaning changes.

What a Shipment proves

In the normal warehouse workflow, a Shipment proves that Parcel Pilot recorded a dispatch event for a specific order and quantity.

Depending on the shipment method and state, that can also mean:

• inventory was deducted
• reservations were cleared for the shipped quantity
• fulfilment state was recalculated from Shipment evidence
• tracking can be pushed back to the ecommerce channel

For manual and external workflows, the Shipment still acts as evidence, but the inventory effect can be different.

Examples:

• Customer collection and External courier still deduct Parcel Pilot stock because the goods physically left the Parcel Pilot warehouse.
• External fulfilment creates Shipment evidence but releases reservations without deducting Parcel Pilot warehouse stock because the physical fulfilment happened elsewhere.

Active evidence vs historical evidence

Parcel Pilot treats a Shipment as active evidence only while it is both:

• not cancelled
• not dispatch-reversed

That distinction matters in diagnostics and fulfilment state calculations.

Active evidence

These rows still count as live operational shipment evidence.

Typical examples:

• a newly created shipment waiting to dispatch
• a committed shipment that deducted stock
• a delivered shipment kept as the normal historical record of a successful dispatch

Historical-only evidence

These rows are still preserved for audit, but they no longer count as active shipment evidence.

Current examples:

• a shipment cancelled with Cancel Before Dispatch
• a committed shipment later corrected with Reverse Dispatch

Normal lifecycle

1. Create Shipment

Most warehouse shipments start from Orders using Create Shipment.

That creates Shipment evidence and, for stock-deducting shipment methods, commits the fulfilment boundary for the shipped quantity.

2. Tracking and status updates

After creation, operators can:

• review the shipment in Shipments
• use Check tracking
• use Re-sync Tracking

Tracking updates change shipment status, but they do not replace the original shipment evidence.

3. Final history

Delivered, returned, and similar outcomes remain part of the shipment history.

Cancelled-before-dispatch and dispatch-reversed rows are also preserved, but they are no longer treated as active evidence.

Which correction workflow to use

Use the correction that matches what really happened.

Situation	Correct workflow	What it does	What it does not do
The shipment was created too early and nothing actually left the warehouse	Cancel Before Dispatch	Preserves the Shipment row for audit, marks it cancelled, and ends its active-evidence role	Does not deduct or restore stock, does not change fulfilment/accounting/channel state
Stock was already committed and you need to unwind that warehouse dispatch	Reverse Dispatch	Preserves the Shipment row, creates compensating inventory adjustments, and recalculates reservations and fulfilment	Does not automatically repair accounting or external channel state
The warehouse physically fulfilled the order, but you intentionally need a stock-only correction with no Shipment row	Record Manual Fulfilment	Shipment-trusted warehouse fallback for current orders when Parcel Pilot confirms it is safe	Does not create Shipment evidence, labels, tracking, channel pushback, or shipment-based billing rows
A shipmentless fulfilment already exists and you now need the later Shipment row only as transport evidence	Create Shipment in evidence-attachment mode	Creates Shipment evidence for the exact missing-evidence quantity without a second stock movement	Does not ship extra quantity or substitute different serial or inventory identity
A legacy order was operationally fulfilled outside the Shipment workflow and now needs a stock/fulfilment repair or automatic evidence attachment is unsafe	Fulfilment Repair	Admin-only repair flow for historical shipmentless fulfilment and blocked historical evidence cases	Does not guess or substitute missing historical serial or inventory evidence
You only need to remove a cancelled draft row that never committed stock	Delete on a cancelled pre-dispatch shipment	Cleanup only for cancelled pre-dispatch shipment rows	Cannot remove committed shipment evidence

Cancel Before Dispatch

Use Cancel Before Dispatch when the shipment should never have proceeded to dispatch.

Current behavior:

• available only for shipments that have not committed inventory
• marks the shipment as cancelled
• marks tracking as final
• preserves the shipment row and lines for audit
• does not touch inventory, fulfilment, accounting, or channel state

Use it when:

• a label was created for the wrong order
• the order was stopped before dispatch
• the operator needs to invalidate the shipment record before any stock movement happened

Do not use it when stock has already been deducted.

Reverse Dispatch

Use Reverse Dispatch when the shipment already committed inventory and that dispatch now needs to be unwound.

Current behavior:

• available only when inventory was committed
• unavailable for cancelled-before-dispatch rows
• unavailable after a shipment has already been reversed
• requires reversible shipment inventory evidence
• restores stock through compensating inventory adjustments
• recalculates reservations and fulfilment state
• preserves the shipment row as historical evidence

The modal requires a Reason.

Important:

• accounting and channel compensation are manual follow-up
• this is the correct workflow when committed stock must be restored
• the same shipment cannot be reversed twice

For the full order-level correction process, including what to do after reversal and why Delete is not the next step, see Correcting a dispatched order.

Delete is cleanup, not correction

Parcel Pilot blocks deletion of committed shipment evidence.

Delete is only for cancelled pre-dispatch cleanup, after Cancel Before Dispatch has already been used.

If stock was committed, use Reverse Dispatch instead.

Fulfilment Repair is not a normal shipment workflow

Fulfilment Repair exists for legacy admin correction cases.

Current behavior:

• hidden from non-admin operators
• intended for historical shipmentless fulfilment repair
• can repair historical fulfilment without a second stock deduction
• is the fallback when later Shipment evidence cannot be attached automatically and an admin must repair the historical record safely

Use Create Shipment for normal warehouse work.

Use Fulfilment Repair only when the order history genuinely needs an admin repair rather than normal shipment evidence.

Record Manual Fulfilment is a strict fallback

Record Manual Fulfilment exists for current orders only when a deliberate shipmentless stock commit is required and Parcel Pilot decides the case is safe.

Current behavior:

• available only to shipment-trusted warehouse roles (owner, admin, operator, warehouse, and super-admin)
• hidden unless the order is still open and has genuine outstanding fulfilment
• hidden when Shipment evidence already exists
• hidden when reconciliation shows historical or ambiguous evidence, external or merged fulfilment, reversals, or other review flags
• uses exact picked serial allocations when serialised lines are involved
• deducts Parcel Pilot stock and clears reservation through the shipmentless fulfilment ledger path
• records the requested warehouse-complete status through the guided status-change flow when an operator tries to set a fulfilment-implying order status directly
• does not create Shipment evidence, labels, tracking, channel pushback, or shipment-based billing rows

If a shipmentless manual fulfilment is recorded first, a later Shipment can still be created to attach transport evidence. That later Shipment is evidence-only: it does not perform a second stock movement.

Automatic later evidence attachment is intentionally strict. Parcel Pilot only attaches that later Shipment automatically when it can still prove the original serial, allocation, inventory-unit, and bundle-snapshot identity exactly.

If those historical references are incomplete or inconsistent, automatic attachment stops and requires admin review instead of substituting another serial or inventory unit.

Use Create Shipment or the correct external shipment method first whenever Shipment evidence should exist.

Use Record Manual Fulfilment only when you intentionally need a stock-only correction path for a current order.

Reconciliation and dashboard follow-up

Parcel Pilot also uses canonical fulfilment reconciliation to classify drift between shipment evidence, shipmentless ledger commits, reservations, allocations, and serial evidence.

Operational implication:

• use Picked Awaiting Dispatch for clean picked work that still needs dispatch
• use Dispatch Problems when the order needs investigation because the evidence layers disagree

Historical or unmirrored review-only cases can remain visible for admin diagnosis without inflating the live operational exception queue.

How inventory behaves

Stock-deducting shipment methods

For the normal warehouse shipment flow, successful shipment creation:

• deducts stock
• clears reservation for the shipped quantity
• updates fulfilment from shipment-backed evidence

Cancelled before dispatch

When Cancel Before Dispatch is used:

• no stock deduction is created
• no restoration is needed
• the shipment becomes historical-only evidence

Dispatch reversed

When Reverse Dispatch is used:

• stock is restored by compensating inventory adjustments
• reservation and fulfilment are recalculated
• the original shipment remains as historical audit evidence

Common questions

What does a Shipment prove?

In Parcel Pilot, it proves that a dispatch event was recorded against an order. For normal warehouse shipment methods, that evidence is also tied to stock deduction, reservation clearing, and fulfilment calculation.

Why keep cancelled or reversed shipments?

Because Parcel Pilot preserves the operational history even when the shipment no longer counts as active evidence.

Why can I not delete this shipment?

Committed shipment evidence cannot be deleted. Use Reverse Dispatch for committed dispatches, or use Cancel Before Dispatch first if the shipment never committed stock.

When should I use Fulfilment Repair?

Only for legacy admin repair cases where fulfilment must be corrected without normal Shipment evidence.

Related guides

• Correcting a dispatched order
• Shipments - Create, Edit & Delete
• Shipment statuses
• Why Can't I Create a Shipment?
• Inventory Lifecycle in Parcel Pilot

Selective natural-language aliases

• what does a shipment prove
• shipment evidence
• cancel before dispatch
• reverse dispatch
• how do i correct a dispatched order
• why can't i delete this order after dispatch
• when should i use fulfilment repair
• when should i use fulfillment repair
• shipment correction