Inventory Holds and Blocking Issues

During fulfillment, each reservation ties up inventory for the items in that order. This guide explains when inventory is held, what happens when a payment fails, and the common issues that can block an order from moving forward.

How Inventory Holds Work

When a reservation is created and items are assigned, inventory for those items is held — meaning those bottles are reserved for that member and are not available for other orders. This hold persists through every active status:

Pending, Pending Choice, Confirmed, Ready, Awaiting Shipment — all of these tie up inventory until the reservation is either fulfilled or cancelled.

Inventory is released (returned to available stock) only when a reservation reaches one of these terminal states:

Fulfilled — the order is complete, inventory has been delivered
Cancelled — the reservation was cancelled, items return to stock
Released — the reservation was reset, items return to stock
Skipped — the member opted out, no inventory was consumed

Payment-Failed Reservations

When a reservation enters Payment Failed status, inventory is still held for that order. WineView does not auto-release stock on a failed charge because most failures resolve on retry — releasing stock prematurely would force you to re-allocate from a different bottle if the retry succeeds.

How to Free Up Held Inventory

Wait for retry success — If Stripe retries and succeeds, the reservation moves back to its prior state and stays held until fulfilled.
Cancel the reservation — From the member's fulfillment sidebar, cancel manually. This releases the held inventory back to available stock.
Cancel the membership — Cancelling the underlying membership releases all its open reservations.

For more on payment failures and retry options, see Failed Payments and Retries.

Blocking Issues

Some reservations can't move forward until a problem is resolved. WineView calls these blocking issues and surfaces them on the Needs Attention filter pill in the fulfillment stats bar.

Common Blocking Issues

Issue	What It Means	How to Resolve
Shipping state not allowed	The member's shipping address is in a state your business doesn't ship to	Update the member's address, or configure the state on Shipping → States
No address or incomplete address	The member needs a valid shipping address	Contact the member to collect their address, or update it in the member sidebar
No payment method	No card on file for this member	Send a card collection link or ask the member to add a card
Not yet charged	A scheduled charge is overdue	Trigger the charge manually or investigate why it didn't run
Charge failed	A previous charge attempt failed	Retry the charge or wait for automatic retry — see Failed Payments and Retries
Missing template	No template has been assigned to the reservation	Assign a template from the member's fulfillment sidebar

Open the member sidebar to see the specific issue and the recommended fix for that order.