As a Sales Order is created in your inventory, it passes through corresponding stages that update the order with certain criteria. It will display one of the following statuses as the lifecycle of a Sales Order progresses.

For a Sales order to progress from one stage to the next, certain criteria need to be met. These criteria then result in corresponding changes to parts of your inventory, such as stock levels.
Before we begin, it is important to remember that there are 3 types of stock in your inventory.
- Stock On-Hand - The total amount of stock held in your locations.
- Stock Committed - The total amount of stock assigned to your Sales Orders.
- Stock Available - Amount of stock available to sell (i.e., Stock On-Hand − Stock Committed = Stock Available).
Learn more about the difference between stock levels in QuickBooks Commerce.
Draft
At this stage, orders are not invoiced. This status is optional, and you have the choice to either set this as the first stage of your Sales Order, or you can proceed immediately to the Active stage.
In the Draft stage, your stock is not committed. Therefore it is useful to send your customers' a Sales Quote before you approve or finalize the order. None of your stock levels will drop in this stage.
Once you are ready to proceed with the sales, approve the draft, and the Sales Order status will change to 'Active'.
If your orders have the 'Draft' status, you can easily edit/delete and remove its record from QuickBooks Commerce.
Active
The active stage is where your stock is committed to the order but has not been deducted from your total stock level.
You can only edit your order at this stage. Once all amendments have been made, click 'Finalize' to proceed to the next stage.
Finalized
At this stage, you can start fulfilling your order. Stock is committed at this stage but will not be deducted from your total stock.
You can now create invoices, payments, and shipments. For shipments, this means that you can create packing slips and packing labels. You also have the option to either create a partial or full shipment.
Invoicing and packing does not need to be done in a specific order. However, to create a payment, you must first create an invoice.
Once you have shipped your products, you will be able to create a return.
Once payment has been marked as paid, it will be synced to your accounting software (XERO/ QuickBooks Online) if you have integrated it with QuickBooks Commerce.
In the finalized stage, you can only make limited edits to your sales orders. Refer below:
1 Edit the quantity of stock ordered; however, you can only add to the quantity, not subtract from it.
2 You can add items and landed costs.
3 You can change the Issue Date and the Shipment Date.
4. You will be able to view the Pick List after you have created a shipment.
Fulfilled
Once the order is shipped, the status will be updated to 'Fulfilled'. Once an order is fulfilled, the stock levels will fall accordingly.
Looking to remove line items from a Sales Order? Read this article.