Turn Pending Orders into Actionable Insights for Your Business
As an Amazon seller, you’ve likely encountered orders with a “Pending” status in your Seller Central account. These orders can be a source of confusion and concern, especially for new sellers.
While sometimes frustrating, pending orders are an important part of Amazon’s process for ensuring secure and valid transactions.
By following the guidelines outlined in this article and staying patient, you can confidently and professionally navigate the world of pending orders.
What Are Amazon Pending Orders
Pending orders on Amazon are transactions that have been initiated but not yet fully processed or approved. They appear in your Manage Orders page's “Pending” tab in Seller Central. These orders are in limbo — a buyer has placed them, but they haven’t been finalized for shipment for various reasons.
Understanding that pending orders are a normal part of the Amazon selling process is crucial. They don’t necessarily indicate a problem with the order or your account. Instead, they represent a temporary status while Amazon verifies certain aspects of the transaction.
Why Do Orders Go into Pending Status?
Several factors can cause an order to enter pending status. Let’s explore the most common reasons:
- Payment Authorization Issues are one of the most frequent causes of pending orders. Amazon may be unable to obtain authorization for the buyer’s credit card. This could be due to insufficient funds, expired card information, or other payment-related problems.
- Convenience Store Payment Methods: Amazon offers convenience store payment options in some regions. When a buyer selects this method, the order remains pending until they complete the payment at a physical store.
- FBA Order Logistics: For Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) orders, two scenarios can lead to pending status:
— If the buyer qualifies for free shipping, the order may remain pending until all items are gathered.
— In multi-item orders where one item is out of stock, the entire order may show as pending even if Amazon decides to split the shipment. - Subscribe & Save Deliveries: These orders are often placed several days before the scheduled delivery date. This allows Amazon to align subscription sign-ups with weekly or monthly delivery dates and ensure inventory is reserved for upcoming deliveries.
Understanding these reasons can help you better manage your expectations and respond appropriately to pending orders.
How to Identify Pending Orders
Identifying pending orders is straightforward, but it’s important to know where to look:
- Log into your Seller Central account.
- Navigate to the Manage Orders page.
- Click on the “Pending” tab.
For FBA sellers, there’s an additional step:
- Check the “View FBA Orders” tab to see pending orders fulfilled by Amazon.
It’s worth noting that pending orders don’t appear in your Orders report or Unshipped Orders Report. This separation helps you focus on actionable orders while Amazon processes the pending ones.
The Impact of Pending Orders on Your Inventory
While pending orders are in a state of flux, they do impact your available inventory. Here’s how:
- The quantity available for the listing is subtracted from your quantity in Manage Inventory.
- If only one item was available when the order was placed, the listing will be removed from the Amazon offer page.
- In Manage Inventory, the item will appear with a quantity of zero while the order is being processed.
This inventory management approach ensures that you don’t oversell items tied up in pending orders. However, it’s important to remember this when managing your stock levels.
What Should You Do with Pending Orders?
The golden rule for pending orders is simple: don’t ship them. Even if a buyer contacts you directly about a pending order, resist the urge to fulfill it. Here’s why:
- Payment Uncertainty: Until the order moves out of pending status, the payment cannot be guaranteed to be processed successfully.
- Lack of Information: Pending orders don’t include the buyer’s shipping address or complete contact information.
- Amazon’s Policies: Shipping a pending order goes against Amazon’s seller policies and could potentially lead to account issues.
If a buyer contacts you about a pending order, the best action is to refer them to Amazon Customer Service. This ensures that any payment or processing issues are handled through the proper channels.
Can You Cancel a Pending Order?
As a seller, you don’t have the option to cancel an order while it’s pending. The “Cancel order” button becomes available only after the order moves to an “Unshipped” status.
If a buyer contacts you wanting to cancel a pending order, advise them to contact Amazon Customer Service directly. Only Amazon can cancel orders in pending status.
The Lifecycle of a Pending Order
Understanding the potential paths a pending order can take helps you manage your expectations and inventory:
- Pending to Unshipped: This is the ideal scenario. Once Amazon verifies the payment method, the order status changes to “Unshipped.” The “Confirm shipment” and “Cancel order” buttons become available in Manage Orders.
- Pending to Canceled: If there are unresolvable issues with the payment or the buyer cancels through Amazon, the order will be canceled directly from the pending status.
- Extended Pending Status: In some cases, Amazon’s verification processes can extend the pending status for up to 21 days. While rare, contacting Seller Support is advisable if an order remains pending beyond this period.
Best Practices for Managing Pending Orders
To effectively handle pending orders and maintain a smooth-running Amazon business, consider these best practices:
- Regular Monitoring: Make it a habit to check your pending orders daily. This will help you stay on top of your inventory and be prepared when orders move to “Unshipped” status.
- Patience is Key: Remember that pending orders are part of Amazon’s process to protect buyers and sellers. Allow the system time to work through any issues.
- Maintain Adequate Inventory: Pending orders tie up your inventory, so ensure you have enough stock to accommodate pending and new orders.
- Prompt Action on Status Changes: When an order moves from pending to unshipped, process it quickly to maintain good performance metrics.
- Clear Communication: If buyers contact you about pending orders, provide clear, professional responses that direct them to Amazon Customer Service for order-specific queries.
How to be a Data-Driven Advertiser with Amazon Pending Orders
While pending orders seem minor to your Amazon business, they can provide valuable insights when analyzed as part of your overall sales data. Here’s how you can leverage this information:
Manual Data Access Process
- Log into your Amazon Seller Central account
- Navigate to the Reports section
- Generate relevant order reports, including those that show pending order data
- Download these reports as CSV or Excel files
This manual process, while informative, can be time-consuming and may not provide real-time insights for frequent analysis.
Leveraging Amazon Order Data Automation
To truly harness the power of your Amazon data, including insights from pending orders, consider leveraging data automation solutions like Openbridge. These tools offer several advantages:
- Direct, automated access to Amazon order data, including pending order information
- Seamless integration with existing business systems
- Elimination of manual report downloads, saving time and reducing errors
- Increased data velocity, allowing for more timely decision-making
- Unified performance data delivery to leading data lakes and cloud warehouses
No more manual file downloads. Get code-free, fully automated Amazon Selling Partner API data pipelines for orders, inventory, traffic, fulfillment, finance, and more.
- FBA Fees
- Order Reports
- Finance API
- Fulfillment
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- FBM/MFN PII
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Openbridge’s unified data approach can significantly enhance your reporting and analytics capabilities and powering tools like Google Data Studio, Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, and many others.
The Openbridge platform creates an analytics-ready single source of truth, enabling more effective decision-making across various aspects of your Amazon selling strategy.
Getting Started with Amazon Pending Orders Automation
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Amazon Pending Orders: A Comprehensive Guide was originally published in Openbridge on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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