My order isn’t processing

An order that has arrived but has not reached the review screen is somewhere in reading and matching.

Give it a moment first

Reading a document usually takes a few seconds. Two things legitimately take longer:

• Scans and photographs, which need text recognition before anything can be read.
• Long orders, where there are simply many lines to match against Shopify.

If it has been under a minute, wait.

Check the order’s state

Open the order. It will be showing one of:

• Processing — still working. Leave it.
• Review — it is ready, and the processing screen you were looking at was stale. Reload.
• Failed — it stopped for a reason. See My PO was rejected.

If it is genuinely stuck

Reload the page. The most common cause of an order that “will not finish” is a screen that did not notice it already had.

Check the file is what you think. A PDF containing only a photograph of a page needs recognition; a 25 MB scan takes longer than a 200 KB one.

Check Shopify. Matching reads your catalogue, companies and delivery options live. If Shopify is degraded, orders sit in processing because the data they need is unavailable. Check the Shopify status page.

If the document is unreadable

Some documents cannot be read usefully — a photograph too dark to recognise, a fax at very low resolution, a PDF whose pages are blank images.

These usually reach review with very little extracted rather than sticking, so you will see an order with no lines or no buyer. Ask the buyer for a better copy, or type the order using Describe order while you wait for one.

Uploading a replacement

An order that failed terminally can take a replacement file against the same purchase order, so it keeps its identity. This is offered on orders in that state.

An order that is merely waiting for a decision from you does not need replacing — work through the review screen instead.

Still nothing

Gather the purchase order number, how it arrived, and roughly when, then see Something still isn’t working.