Orders, Inventory and Fulfillment Glossary · Commerce

3PL (third-party logistics provider): a company that runs warehouses for brands, receiving, storing, picking, packing and shipping their stock for fees per receipt, unit stored and order, as ShipBob and ShipMonk do (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks).
940 and 945: the X12 Warehouse Shipping Order a brand sends a warehouse and the Warehouse Shipping Advice the warehouse sends back when it ships (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks).
Advance exchange: shipping the replacement before the original comes back, with a hold or authorization in case it never does (Returns & Exchanges).
Advance ship notice (ASN): a notice of what an inbound truck, pallet or carton contains, sent ahead so the receiver can check it; ShipBob's version is a warehouse receiving order (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks; for purchase orders, Purchasing & Replenishment).
Available to promise (ATP): availability projected by date from on-hand stock, expected receipts and known demand, as NetSuite computes it; the number a backorder or delivery date depends on (Inventory).
Billable weight: the greater of a package's actual weight and its dimensional weight, each rounded up, which carriers price on (Shipping & Carriers).
Blind count: a cycle count in which the counter isn't shown the expected quantity (Inventory).
BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store): an online order fulfilled from a store's shelf and collected at a counter or locker, modeled as a pickup fulfillment at the store (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
BORIS (buy online, return in store): returning an online order at a store counter under the order's return policy, Home Depot's name for it (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
Box-free return: handing an unpackaged item and a code to a drop-off counter that consolidates many returns into one shipment, as Happy Returns and Amazon's partner stores do (Returns & Exchanges).
Bracketing: buying several sizes or colors intending to return all but one; 51% of Gen Z shoppers said they do it in NRF's 2024 report (Returns & Exchanges).
Cartonization: choosing the smallest box that fits an order's items, because carriers bill dimensional weight (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks).
Consolidated Screening List: the US government's combined export screening lists from Commerce, State and the Treasury, used to screen buyers before an export (Cross-Border Commerce).
Croston's method: a forecast for intermittent demand that smooths non-zero demand sizes and the gaps between them separately; widely used, known to be biased (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Curbside (Drive Up): pickup with the handoff at the customer's car after they check in with a parking spot or vehicle description (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
Cycle count: counting a slice of bins or items every day (by ABC class, trigger or sweep) instead of closing the building for a full physical inventory (Inventory).
DAP (Delivered at Place): the Incoterm under which the seller delivers to the destination and the buyer clears import and pays duty and tax, typically at the door (Cross-Border Commerce).
DDP (Delivered Duty Paid): the Incoterm under which the seller also clears import and pays the duty and tax, so the shopper pays nothing on delivery (Cross-Border Commerce).
De minimis (customs): a value below which imports enter without duty; the US suspended its $800 exemption for all countries from August 29, 2025 and repeals it by statute on July 1, 2027 (Cross-Border Commerce).
Dimensional weight: length times width times height, divided by a carrier's divisor (139 for USPS, UPS and FedEx as of October 2026, USPS only above one cubic foot) (Shipping & Carriers).
Disposition: what happens to a returned unit, set at inspection: restock, refurbish, return to vendor, liquidate, donate, recycle or destroy (Returns & Exchanges).
Distributed order management (DOM): sourcing each order's lines across many locations (warehouses, stores, 3PLs, marketplace networks, suppliers) by rules and costs (Order Management).
Dock-to-stock time: the time from stock arriving at a warehouse to being available to sell (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks).
EAR99: the designation for items subject to the US Export Administration Regulations but not on the Commerce Control List; most consumer goods (Cross-Border Commerce).
EEI (Electronic Export Information): the US export filing in the Automated Export System, required over $2,500 per Schedule B code or for licensed items (Cross-Border Commerce).
Endless aisle: an order taken in a store for something the store doesn't have, fulfilled from a warehouse, another store or a supplier (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
EOQ (economic order quantity): the order size that balances ordering cost against holding cost: the square root of 2 x annual demand x cost per order over the yearly holding cost per unit (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Fill rate (supplier): units received over units ordered, a supplier score computed from receipts (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Fulfillment order: Shopify's unit of fulfillment work: some of an order's lines assigned to one location, with its own state (open, scheduled, on hold, in progress, closed, cancelled) (Order Management).
Fulfillment request: asking a warehouse or 3PL to ship a fulfillment, which it accepts or rejects; after acceptance, cancellation is a request it may refuse (Order Management).
Hold (order): a stop on an order or fulfillment without cancelling it, for payment, fraud, address, stock, an upsell window, an exchange, a schedule or a compliance check (Order Management).
HS code: the six-digit Harmonized System classification shared by more than 200 countries, extended nationally (10-digit HTSUS and Schedule B in the US, 8-digit CN in the EU) (Cross-Border Commerce).
IMpb (Intelligent Mail package barcode): the GS1-128-based barcode USPS requires on commercial packages, with piece-level data sent electronically (Shipping & Carriers).
IOSS (Import One-Stop Shop): the EU scheme since 1 July 2021 under which a seller or marketplace collects VAT at checkout on consignments up to €150 (Cross-Border Commerce).
Landed cost: a unit's supplier price plus freight, insurance, duty, brokerage and handling, allocated to received units by quantity, value, weight or volume (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Lead time (purchasing): the time from placing a purchase order to the goods arriving at the dock, including the supplier's confirmation, production, transit and customs; its variance matters as much as its average (Purchasing & Replenishment).
License plate number (LPN): an ID on a pallet, carton or tote so a warehouse can move its contents as one thing (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks).
Market: a set of countries sold to the same way: currency, price list, tax-inclusive display, payment methods, duties policy and seller of record (Cross-Border Commerce).
Merchant-of-record service: a provider (Global-e, Reach, Shopify Managed Markets through Global-e) that buys from the brand and resells to the shopper abroad, taking on tax, duty, payments and local consumer duties for a fee (Cross-Border Commerce).
Min/max: a reorder policy that orders up to a maximum when projected stock falls below a minimum (Purchasing & Replenishment).
MOQ (minimum order quantity): the smallest quantity a supplier will sell or make in one order; with case packs and order multiples it rounds every replenishment quantity (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF): Amazon shipping a seller's orders from other channels out of the seller's FBA inventory, optionally in unbranded boxes (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks).
Order edit: a staged change to an order (lines, quantities, shipping, discounts) committed with its inventory, tax and payment consequences; Shopify allows edits to unfulfilled lines only (Order Management).
Oversell: an order for stock that doesn't exist, from concurrency, sync lag or a deliberate policy to keep selling (Inventory).
Phantom stock: units the inventory record says are on hand that aren't on the shelf; a public study found 65% of nearly 370,000 store records inaccurate (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
Rate shopping: choosing, per package, the cheapest carrier, service and account whose expected delivery meets the promise (Shipping & Carriers).
Reorder point: the projected stock level that triggers a replenishment order: demand during the lead time plus safety stock (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Reservation (inventory): stock set aside with an owner and an expiry before it's sold, for a checkout, a quote, a drop or a store hold (Inventory).
Restocking fee: a percentage of the price kept from a refund, recorded as its own line with its rule (Returns & Exchanges).
Return to vendor (RTV): sending goods back to a supplier under its authorization for a credit memo (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Returnless refund (keep it): refunding without asking for the item back, by rule up to a value, when return costs exceed the item's recovery value (Returns & Exchanges).
RMA (return merchandise authorization): an approved return request with a number the warehouse scans to match the package to the order lines (Returns & Exchanges).
Safety stock: stock held beyond expected lead-time demand to cover variation in demand and lead time at a target service level (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Safety stock (selling buffer): units withheld from a channel so lag and count errors don't oversell; distinct from replenishment safety stock, which covers demand during supplier lead time (Inventory).
Ship-from-store: a store picking, packing and shipping an online order with a carrier label, as a shipping fulfillment from the store location (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
Short pick: a picker finding fewer units than the record says; treated as a count that corrects the store's inventory (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
Shrink: the difference between recorded and actual stock that no movement explains; 1.6% of US retail sales in fiscal 2022 by NRF's survey (Inventory).
Sourcing (order routing): choosing which location and provider ship each line: filter to feasible locations, then rank by splits, distance, cost and the promise (Order Management).
Split shipment: an order sent as several fulfillments or packages, each with its own label, cost and capture (Order Management).
SSCC (Serial Shipping Container Code): GS1's 18-digit ID for a carton or pallet, printed as a GS1-128 barcode and linked to the ASN (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks).
Store buffer: units kept back from a store's online availability for walk-ins and count error, per item and store (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
Three-way match: paying a supplier invoice only where the purchase order, the receipt and the invoice agree within tolerance (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Tracking event: a carrier scan, stored raw and mapped to a small normalized set (pre-transit, in transit, out for delivery, delivered, exception, return to sender, failure) (Shipping & Carriers).
Unified commerce: one back end for orders, inventory and customers across every channel, as opposed to separate systems synced together (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
Wardrobing: using an item and returning it as unused, such as an outfit after an event (Returns & Exchanges).
WMS (warehouse management system): software that directs receiving, putaway, picking, packing and shipping inside a building (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks).
Zone (carrier): a distance band from origin to destination that carriers price by; USPS uses zones 1 to 9 (Shipping & Carriers).

3PL (third-party logistics provider): a company that runs warehouses for brands, receiving, storing, picking, packing and shipping their stock for fees per receipt, unit stored and order, as ShipBob and ShipMonk do (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks).
940 and 945: the X12 Warehouse Shipping Order a brand sends a warehouse and the Warehouse Shipping Advice the warehouse sends back when it ships (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks).
Advance exchange: shipping the replacement before the original comes back, with a hold or authorization in case it never does (Returns & Exchanges).
Advance ship notice (ASN): a notice of what an inbound truck, pallet or carton contains, sent ahead so the receiver can check it; ShipBob's version is a warehouse receiving order (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks; for purchase orders, Purchasing & Replenishment).
Available to promise (ATP): availability projected by date from on-hand stock, expected receipts and known demand, as NetSuite computes it; the number a backorder or delivery date depends on (Inventory).
Billable weight: the greater of a package's actual weight and its dimensional weight, each rounded up, which carriers price on (Shipping & Carriers).
Blind count: a cycle count in which the counter isn't shown the expected quantity (Inventory).
BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store): an online order fulfilled from a store's shelf and collected at a counter or locker, modeled as a pickup fulfillment at the store (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
BORIS (buy online, return in store): returning an online order at a store counter under the order's return policy, Home Depot's name for it (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
Box-free return: handing an unpackaged item and a code to a drop-off counter that consolidates many returns into one shipment, as Happy Returns and Amazon's partner stores do (Returns & Exchanges).
Bracketing: buying several sizes or colors intending to return all but one; 51% of Gen Z shoppers said they do it in NRF's 2024 report (Returns & Exchanges).
Cartonization: choosing the smallest box that fits an order's items, because carriers bill dimensional weight (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks).
Consolidated Screening List: the US government's combined export screening lists from Commerce, State and the Treasury, used to screen buyers before an export (Cross-Border Commerce).
Croston's method: a forecast for intermittent demand that smooths non-zero demand sizes and the gaps between them separately; widely used, known to be biased (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Curbside (Drive Up): pickup with the handoff at the customer's car after they check in with a parking spot or vehicle description (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
Cycle count: counting a slice of bins or items every day (by ABC class, trigger or sweep) instead of closing the building for a full physical inventory (Inventory).
DAP (Delivered at Place): the Incoterm under which the seller delivers to the destination and the buyer clears import and pays duty and tax, typically at the door (Cross-Border Commerce).
DDP (Delivered Duty Paid): the Incoterm under which the seller also clears import and pays the duty and tax, so the shopper pays nothing on delivery (Cross-Border Commerce).
De minimis (customs): a value below which imports enter without duty; the US suspended its $800 exemption for all countries from August 29, 2025 and repeals it by statute on July 1, 2027 (Cross-Border Commerce).
Dimensional weight: length times width times height, divided by a carrier's divisor (139 for USPS, UPS and FedEx as of October 2026, USPS only above one cubic foot) (Shipping & Carriers).
Disposition: what happens to a returned unit, set at inspection: restock, refurbish, return to vendor, liquidate, donate, recycle or destroy (Returns & Exchanges).
Distributed order management (DOM): sourcing each order's lines across many locations (warehouses, stores, 3PLs, marketplace networks, suppliers) by rules and costs (Order Management).
Dock-to-stock time: the time from stock arriving at a warehouse to being available to sell (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks).
EAR99: the designation for items subject to the US Export Administration Regulations but not on the Commerce Control List; most consumer goods (Cross-Border Commerce).
EEI (Electronic Export Information): the US export filing in the Automated Export System, required over $2,500 per Schedule B code or for licensed items (Cross-Border Commerce).
Endless aisle: an order taken in a store for something the store doesn't have, fulfilled from a warehouse, another store or a supplier (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
EOQ (economic order quantity): the order size that balances ordering cost against holding cost: the square root of 2 x annual demand x cost per order over the yearly holding cost per unit (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Fill rate (supplier): units received over units ordered, a supplier score computed from receipts (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Fulfillment order: Shopify's unit of fulfillment work: some of an order's lines assigned to one location, with its own state (open, scheduled, on hold, in progress, closed, cancelled) (Order Management).
Fulfillment request: asking a warehouse or 3PL to ship a fulfillment, which it accepts or rejects; after acceptance, cancellation is a request it may refuse (Order Management).
Hold (order): a stop on an order or fulfillment without cancelling it, for payment, fraud, address, stock, an upsell window, an exchange, a schedule or a compliance check (Order Management).
HS code: the six-digit Harmonized System classification shared by more than 200 countries, extended nationally (10-digit HTSUS and Schedule B in the US, 8-digit CN in the EU) (Cross-Border Commerce).
IMpb (Intelligent Mail package barcode): the GS1-128-based barcode USPS requires on commercial packages, with piece-level data sent electronically (Shipping & Carriers).
IOSS (Import One-Stop Shop): the EU scheme since 1 July 2021 under which a seller or marketplace collects VAT at checkout on consignments up to €150 (Cross-Border Commerce).
Landed cost: a unit's supplier price plus freight, insurance, duty, brokerage and handling, allocated to received units by quantity, value, weight or volume (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Lead time (purchasing): the time from placing a purchase order to the goods arriving at the dock, including the supplier's confirmation, production, transit and customs; its variance matters as much as its average (Purchasing & Replenishment).
License plate number (LPN): an ID on a pallet, carton or tote so a warehouse can move its contents as one thing (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks).
Market: a set of countries sold to the same way: currency, price list, tax-inclusive display, payment methods, duties policy and seller of record (Cross-Border Commerce).
Merchant-of-record service: a provider (Global-e, Reach, Shopify Managed Markets through Global-e) that buys from the brand and resells to the shopper abroad, taking on tax, duty, payments and local consumer duties for a fee (Cross-Border Commerce).
Min/max: a reorder policy that orders up to a maximum when projected stock falls below a minimum (Purchasing & Replenishment).
MOQ (minimum order quantity): the smallest quantity a supplier will sell or make in one order; with case packs and order multiples it rounds every replenishment quantity (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF): Amazon shipping a seller's orders from other channels out of the seller's FBA inventory, optionally in unbranded boxes (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks).
Order edit: a staged change to an order (lines, quantities, shipping, discounts) committed with its inventory, tax and payment consequences; Shopify allows edits to unfulfilled lines only (Order Management).
Oversell: an order for stock that doesn't exist, from concurrency, sync lag or a deliberate policy to keep selling (Inventory).
Phantom stock: units the inventory record says are on hand that aren't on the shelf; a public study found 65% of nearly 370,000 store records inaccurate (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
Rate shopping: choosing, per package, the cheapest carrier, service and account whose expected delivery meets the promise (Shipping & Carriers).
Reorder point: the projected stock level that triggers a replenishment order: demand during the lead time plus safety stock (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Reservation (inventory): stock set aside with an owner and an expiry before it's sold, for a checkout, a quote, a drop or a store hold (Inventory).
Restocking fee: a percentage of the price kept from a refund, recorded as its own line with its rule (Returns & Exchanges).
Return to vendor (RTV): sending goods back to a supplier under its authorization for a credit memo (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Returnless refund (keep it): refunding without asking for the item back, by rule up to a value, when return costs exceed the item's recovery value (Returns & Exchanges).
RMA (return merchandise authorization): an approved return request with a number the warehouse scans to match the package to the order lines (Returns & Exchanges).
Safety stock: stock held beyond expected lead-time demand to cover variation in demand and lead time at a target service level (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Safety stock (selling buffer): units withheld from a channel so lag and count errors don't oversell; distinct from replenishment safety stock, which covers demand during supplier lead time (Inventory).
Ship-from-store: a store picking, packing and shipping an online order with a carrier label, as a shipping fulfillment from the store location (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
Short pick: a picker finding fewer units than the record says; treated as a count that corrects the store's inventory (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
Shrink: the difference between recorded and actual stock that no movement explains; 1.6% of US retail sales in fiscal 2022 by NRF's survey (Inventory).
Sourcing (order routing): choosing which location and provider ship each line: filter to feasible locations, then rank by splits, distance, cost and the promise (Order Management).
Split shipment: an order sent as several fulfillments or packages, each with its own label, cost and capture (Order Management).
SSCC (Serial Shipping Container Code): GS1's 18-digit ID for a carton or pallet, printed as a GS1-128 barcode and linked to the ASN (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks).
Store buffer: units kept back from a store's online availability for walk-ins and count error, per item and store (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
Three-way match: paying a supplier invoice only where the purchase order, the receipt and the invoice agree within tolerance (Purchasing & Replenishment).
Tracking event: a carrier scan, stored raw and mapped to a small normalized set (pre-transit, in transit, out for delivery, delivered, exception, return to sender, failure) (Shipping & Carriers).
Unified commerce: one back end for orders, inventory and customers across every channel, as opposed to separate systems synced together (Omnichannel Fulfillment).
Wardrobing: using an item and returning it as unused, such as an outfit after an event (Returns & Exchanges).
WMS (warehouse management system): software that directs receiving, putaway, picking, packing and shipping inside a building (Warehouses, 3PLs & Fulfillment Networks).
Zone (carrier): a distance band from origin to destination that carriers price by; USPS uses zones 1 to 9 (Shipping & Carriers).