Fulfilment groups
A fulfilment group is the per-site unit of fulfilment on an order.
One group per site
An order dispatched from two sites has two fulfilment groups, each picked, packed and dispatched on its own schedule. This is why an order can read Partially fulfilled — one group can be well ahead of the other.
The group carries the physical progress
Each fulfilment group moves through its own sequence: planned, picking, picked, packed, dispatched, delivered. See the status reference for what each value means. The order-level fulfilment status you see is derived from these group statuses, not stored separately.
How groups get their site
The routing engine assigns each fulfilment group its site. The rule set version in force is recorded the first time an order is routed, and it is never re-evaluated after that — so editing your routing rules never re-routes orders that are already in flight. Orders that were never routed by the engine — a till sale, a manual draft — have no recorded rule set version.
Groups from a channel skip picking
A fulfilment group created by Yessort goes through the normal picker workflow. A fulfilment group created from an inbound channel webhook — the merchant fulfilled the order at the till, say — skips the picker workflow entirely, because the channel has already dispatched the goods.
Splitting and merging within an order
Sometimes part of an order is ready to go now and part isn't. On a planned group you can carve some lines off into a new group at the same site, or merge planned groups back into one, from Restructure groups on the order's Fulfilment groups card. This requires permission to update orders, and only applies to groups that haven't started picking — once a group is underway, its lines are fixed.
Combining two orders into one consignment
Two orders can be merged into one consignment — one box, one label, one tracking number — when they belong to the same customer, share a shipping address, and route to the same site, provided neither order has already been dispatched. Orders meeting these conditions appear as merge suggestions on either order. Once merged, the picking work for both orders is done together, and both orders' fulfilment groups move through picking and packing at the same time.
A dispatch can be recorded without a Yessort pick
If a channel reports goods dispatched for an order Yessort never allocated — routing switched off, a site mismatch, or the dispatch landing before allocation — Yessort records the dispatched quantity on the order lines even though it never picked them, so the order doesn't wrongly read Unfulfilled.