Validate whole order fulfillment viability at checkout
Author:
Fluent Commerce
Changed on:
22 Oct 2025
Problem
Customers expect to know at checkout whether their entire order can be fulfilled in one go, avoiding the frustration of split shipments, backorders, or partial cancellations. However, without real-time visibility into inventory across all fulfillment locations and the logic to assess complete order fulfillment feasibility upfront, retailers cannot validate order completeness before acceptance.
This inability to perform pre-fulfillment inventory checks results in poor customer experiences from unexpected split shipments, increased shipping costs from multiple deliveries, higher customer service volumes handling partial order inquiries, and potential order cancellations when customers discover items cannot be fulfilled as expected.
Example
A national home furnishings retailer selling coordinated furniture collections had a checkout system that accepted orders without validating whether all items could be fulfilled from the same location or timeframe.
Orders for complete room sets frequently resulted in split shipments because their system couldn't verify upfront that all items were available together. By the time warehouse teams began processing orders, inventory conflicts had already occurred, forcing items to ship from multiple locations over extended timeframes.
This created compounding costs through multiplied logistics expenses, additional carrier bookings, and increased warehouse labor. Their customer service team was overwhelmed managing delivery coordination and issuing retention discounts. Most critically, their brand positioning around "complete room solutions" was undermined when customers received furniture in pieces over weeks rather than coordinated deliveries.
Without order-level fulfillment validation at checkout, they couldn't optimize fulfillment strategy, protect margins from unnecessary shipping costs, or deliver on their core value proposition.
