Hold Orders for Review

A review hold stops an order before it’s sent to the warehouse and keeps it there until someone on your team releases it. Use it when a person needs to look at an order before it ships — to verify payment, confirm customs details, or check stock. You can hold an order by hand, or write a rule that holds matching orders automatically as they’re imported.

When to use a review hold

• Payment or fraud review. Hold high-value orders, or orders from first-time customers, until finance confirms payment.
• International orders. Hold orders shipping outside your home country until someone confirms customs paperwork or restricted-item rules.
• Pre-orders and low stock. Hold orders for pre-order SKUs, or for items you know are short, until stock arrives.
• Merchant approval. Hold orders tagged a certain way on the sales channel (for example hold-for-review) until the merchant signs off.
• Address or data problems. Hold an order you’ve spotted a problem with while you contact the customer, instead of letting it reach the warehouse.

A review hold is different from a timed hold (hold order until … / hold order waiting …), which pauses an order and releases it on its own at a set time. A review hold never releases on its own — see Routing and Fulfillment Actions for timed holds.

How a held order looks

A held order shows the On Hold status. The order page shows a banner with the hold reason, plus buttons to release it.

While an order is on hold:

• It is not sent to the warehouse, and it isn’t closed by the abandoned-order timeout. It stays on hold until someone releases or cancels it.
• If the store cancels the order, the order is canceled and the hold ends.
• If the store edits the order, DropStream saves the changes and shows them in a Changes made while held panel on the banner. They’re applied when you release the order. See Order Modifications.

To find every held order, filter the orders list by Status: On Hold — see Search and filter orders.

Hold an order manually

1. Open the order.

2. Click Actions, then Hold for review.

   

   Hold for review only appears while the order hasn’t been sent to the warehouse yet. Once the warehouse has the order, it can’t be held in DropStream.

3. Enter a Reason. It’s required, and it’s shown on the order’s hold banner and in its Activity tab.

   

4. Click Place on Hold.

Hold orders automatically with a rule

Add the hold order for review action to an Order Import rule. Every imported order that matches the rule’s conditions is held, with the reason you give.

hold order for review
hold order for review with "Reason shown on the hold banner"

In the visual editor, add a Hold statement and set Hold Type to For Review. The Reason (optional) field is shown on the order’s hold banner and activity trail, trimmed to 255 characters.

Review high-value orders:

rule "Review high-value orders"
  when
    order.total > 1000.0
  then
    hold order for review with "Order total over $1,000 - verify payment"
  end
end

Review international orders:

rule "Review international orders"
  when
    order.shipping_address.country is_not "US"
  then
    hold order for review with "International order - confirm customs details"
  end
end

Hold orders the merchant tagged on the sales channel:

rule "Hold orders tagged for review"
  when
    order.external_tags contains "hold-for-review"
  then
    hold order for review with "Tagged hold-for-review on the sales channel"
  end
end

Hold pre-order SKUs:

rule "Hold pre-order SKUs"
  when
    order has any order_lines with (order_line.sku starts_with "PRE-")
  then
    hold order for review with "Contains a pre-order SKU"
  end
end

Include order details in the reason:

rule "Hold orders needing approval"
  when
    order.custom.requires_approval is "yes"
  then
    hold order for review with "Approval required for " & order.customer_email
  end
end

A few things to know when writing hold rules:

• Put routing rules before the hold rule. A hold stops all remaining rules for the order. If the order is later force-released, it goes straight to the warehouse using whatever routing it already has — so routing needs to have run first.
• The reason must be text. A quoted string or a string joined with & works. To use a field on its own, cast it: with order.notes as text.
• Review holds only apply at Order Import. By the time a shipment notification or return arrives, the order has already gone to the warehouse.

For more examples, see Rules for Imported Orders.

Release a held order

You have two ways to release an order from the hold banner.

Release & reprocess

Click Release & reprocess, then Yes, Release. The order goes back through your fulfillment rules from the start, as if it had just been imported. It may be held again if the rule that held it still matches — for example, if the order total is still over your review threshold.

Use this when you’ve fixed the underlying problem (updated the address, added stock, changed the order on the sales channel) and want the rules to decide what happens next.

Force release

Click Force release to send the order to fulfillment without re-running the fulfillment rules — including the rule that held it. Use this when you’ve reviewed the order and want it to ship even though the hold condition still applies.

1. Click Force release on the hold banner.
2. Choose a Reason: Stock verified, Merchant instruction, or Other.
3. Optionally add a Note (optional).
4. Click Force Release.

The order’s warehouse, shipping method, and address checks still apply. If one of them fails, you’ll see an error explaining what to fix.

If the store edited the order while it was held, a force release is changed to Release & reprocess so the edits go through your rules. If the store canceled the order while it was held, there’s nothing to release — the order is canceled.

Release several orders at once

1. On the orders list, filter by Status: On Hold.
2. Select the orders you want to release.
3. Click More Actions, then Release hold or Force release….

Selected orders that aren’t on hold are skipped. See Bulk order actions for more on selecting orders.

Holds on the sales channel

On sales channels that support it — Shopify, for example — DropStream can also place a matching hold on the order in the sales channel, so the merchant sees it there. If the merchant releases that hold in the sales channel, DropStream treats it as a Release & reprocess.

If you don’t see this happening for your store and want it turned on, contact support@getdropstream.com.

Who can hold and release orders

Anyone who can reset an order can hold and release it. Admins and staff can act on any order they have access to. Merchant users and customer-scoped staff can act only on their own customers’ orders.