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Payments & fulfilment

Automatically Release Held Preorder Orders

If you have a large number of held fulfillment orders (e.g. after a preorder product comes back in stock), you can use Shopify Flow to automatically release them instead of doing it manually.

Updated 23 Oct 2026·2 min read·Plan: all

This workflow processes up to 100 fulfillment orders per run, so if you have hundreds of orders, simply let it repeat until all orders are released

Step 1: Install Shopify Flow

If you haven’t already, install the Shopify Flow app from the Shopify App Store.

Step 2: Create a New Workflow

  1. Open Shopify Flow.
  2. Click Create workflow.
  3. Our flow will look like this

Screenshot: 3. Our flow will look like this

Step 3: Configure the Trigger

  1. Select the trigger:
    • Flow → Scheduled time
  2. Set the first run for a few minutes in the future (to give yourself time to finish building the workflow).
  3. Set the workflow to repeat every 10 minutes (the minimum interval).

Screenshot: 3. Set the workflow to repeat every 10 minutes (the minimum interval).

Why repeat every 10 minutes?

Shopify Flow can only retrieve up to 100 fulfillment orders per execution. Repeating the workflow allows it to gradually process all held orders.

Step 4: Get Held Fulfillment Orders

Add the action:

Shopify → Get fulfillment order data

Configure it as follows:

  • Sort by: ID (Ascending)
  • Maximum fulfillment orders: 100
  • Query: Held fulfillment orders

Screenshot: Query: Held fulfillment orders

Step 5: Loop Through the Orders

Add:

Flow → For each

  • List: Returned data from Get fulfilment order data

This will process each fulfilment order individually.

Screenshot: This will process each fulfilment order individually.

Step 6: Filter for Your Preorder Product(s)

Inside the For each loop, add an If condition.

Check:

Fulfillment Order Item→ Line Items→ Line Item→ Product→ ID

Condition:

  • Product ID is at least one of
    • Product ID 1
    • Product ID 2
    • Product ID 3
    • (Add as many preorder product IDs as needed.)

This ensures only fulfillment orders containing your preorder products are released.

Screenshot: This ensures only fulfillment orders containing your preorder products are released.

Step 7: Release the Hold

Inside the If condition, add:

Shopify → Release fulfillment order holds

This removes the fulfillment hold from matching orders.

Screenshot: This removes the fulfillment hold from matching orders.

Step 8: Run the Workflow

  1. Turn the workflow On.
  2. Let it run until all held orders have been processed.
  3. Turn the workflow Off once finished.

For example, a store with 400+ held preorder orders allowed the workflow to run for about one hour, automatically releasing all fulfillment holds without any manual work.

Notes & Limitations

  • Shopify Flow processes up to 100 fulfillment orders per execution.
  • Running the workflow every 10 minutes allows larger batches to be processed automatically.
  • Filtering by Product ID ensures only the intended preorder products are affected.
  • This is especially useful when inventory arrives and you need to release hundreds of held fulfillment orders at once.

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