Cancel, release the reservation or roll back a shipment

Overview

Plans change: the customer cancels, changes quantities, more stock arrives, the truck doesn’t show up, or the shipment was entered under the wrong customer. Each case has its path and all of them leave a trail. The general rule: until the shipment is loaded, almost everything can be undone; once shipped, only header details can be corrected.

Before you start

Cancelling, releasing the reservation, going back to draft, editing details and linking or unlinking need the Create Shipments permission (default: Admin and Supervisor).
Correcting customer or number needs Amend Document Identity (default: Admin and Supervisor).
Secondary actions live in the ⋮ menu to the right of the timeline.

What you can do in each status

Status	Available actions
Draft	Edit everything · Confirm · Cancel · Correct customer or number
Confirmed (no reservation)	Edit (with reason) · Allocate · Back to draft · Cancel · Correct customer or number
Reserved	Edit (with reason) · Cancel Allocation · Close · Cancel (after releasing) · Correct customer or number
Loading	Edit details · Unlink the dock job · Close · Correct the number
Shipped	Edit details · Correct the number · Resend the email · Regenerate documents
Cancelled	Nothing

Cancel the allocation and allocate again

Cancelling the allocation returns the reserved stock to available and puts the shipment back in Confirmed. Use it to:

Free stock a more urgent shipment needs.
Complete a partial reservation when more stock arrived (though Edit is more direct for that).
As a step before cancelling the shipment or sending it back to draft.

On the reserved shipment, open the ⋮ menu.
Choose Cancel Allocation (in orange). It doesn’t ask for confirmation.
The shipment goes back to Confirmed; each line’s allocated and picked quantities and verification marks go to zero, and the reservations disappear from the pull list.
To reserve again, click Allocate Stock on the timeline.

Important: cancelling the allocation also wipes the worker’s loading record. If the truck is already loaded, don’t do it: close the shipment.

Back to draft

A Confirmed shipment with no reservation goes back to draft with the Back to draft to edit lines button in the lines section header. You land straight in the edit form. As a draft nothing is reserved; confirming again notifies the warehouse again and tries to reserve. With a reservation the button doesn’t show: cancel the allocation first.

A draft that came from the portal and has no truck linked can be edited or cancelled again by the customer from their portal.

Cancel the shipment

If it is reserved, cancel the allocation first. With a live reservation the cancellation is refused.
Open the ⋮ menu and choose Cancel Shipment.
Type the Reason (required, up to 500 characters) and click Confirm cancellation.

The shipment becomes Cancelled: a red banner with who, when and the reason replaces the timeline. No inventory moves. The customer sees it cancelled in their portal; no email is sent. It stays in the list under the cancelled filter and no longer counts for the late-shipments alert.

Important: a shipment in Loading or Shipped can’t be cancelled.

What happens to accessorials

Accessorials on an open shipment are held: they aren’t sent to billing until the shipment closes. When you cancel, if the warehouse uses billing, the system reviews them:

If the dock job has another shipment that did ship, they are billed against that one.
If the job has another shipment still open, they stay held for it.
If they only pointed at cancelled shipments, they won’t be billed and you get the notice “N accessorial charges from this shipment will NOT be billed (the shipment never left)…”. Review them in the dock job capture: re-capture them against the right document or delete them.

If the shipment is already loading

In Loading you can’t cancel, release the reservation, edit lines or change the customer: the truck is at the dock. If the loading won’t happen, first undo the move to Loading:

Cancel the pickup dock job on the dock board, or
Unlink the shipment with the Unlink button on the dock job card (it asks for confirmation).

Either way the shipment returns to Reserved (or Confirmed if it had no reservation) with its reservation intact. From there you can edit, release or cancel. See Dock, yard and cross-dock.

Fix details on a closed shipment

In Loading and Shipped the header shows Edit details. A banner reminds you only details change. You can change: reference, document, ship-to, carrier, driver, trailer, seal, PRO number, tracking number and notes.

It does not change lines, quantities, inventory or status.
It does not resend the email. To send the corrected version, use Send by Email.
An already generated BOL doesn’t update itself: regenerate it from the documents panel.
If you change the reference, it carries over to the shipment’s charges and invoices.

Correct the customer or the shipment number

If the shipment was entered with the wrong customer or a number that doesn’t fit, use the Correct client / number link under the shipment number.

The Correct identity panel opens at the bottom of the page.
Pick the new customer, type the new number, or both.
Type the Reason (required, 3 to 500 characters) and click Apply correction.

Changing the customer is possible until loading. If it was reserved, the reservation is released (back to Confirmed) and you have to allocate again. Every line moves to the new customer, and lines with products exclusive to another customer are dropped. The number is regenerated from the new customer’s sequence unless you type one.
Changing the number is always possible, as long as no other shipment uses it. If it already shipped, emails and PDFs already sent keep the old number.
Each correction is logged in the Correction history with who, when and why.

Example

Shipment SH-SOUTH-2026-00207 for Southern Logistics is reserved and linked to a dock job that has started: it is Loading. At 9:30 the customer calls to cancel. Luis Pérez unlinks the job (the shipment returns to Reserved), cancels the allocation from the ⋮ menu (back to Confirmed, stock available again) and cancels the shipment with the reason “customer cancelled by phone 9:30”. The shrink-wrap accessorial already captured won’t be billed and the notice to review it appears.

Error messages and troubleshooting

“This shipment cannot be cancelled: it has live stock reservations or is already closed. Cancel the allocation first.”

Cancel the allocation from the ⋮ menu first. If it is Loading or Shipped, it can’t be cancelled.

“This shipment has live stock reservations. Cancel the allocation before returning to draft.”

Release it first, or use Edit, which doesn’t need a return to draft.

“Only confirmed shipments (without reservations) can be returned to draft.”

The shipment isn’t Confirmed.

“Details can only be edited while loading or after shipping.”

For a shipment before loading, use Edit.

“This shipment is loading (the dock job started). Revert the job before changing the client.”

Unlink or cancel the dock job to return it to Reserved and correct afterwards.

“A shipped/cancelled shipment cannot change client (stock already left). Cancel and recreate.”

If it hasn’t really left, cancel and enter it again; if it has, correct with an adjustment.

“No changes: pick a different client or number.”

Nothing was changed in the panel.

A message says the number is already taken.

Another shipment has that number. Pick another one.

“A shipped shipment cannot be unlinked.”

After closing, the link to the dock job can’t be removed.

FAQ

Can a cancelled shipment be reactivated?

No. Cancellation is final. Create a new shipment; you can reuse the customer reference (the form warns it exists, ignoring cancelled ones).

Why can’t I touch this shipment’s reservation?

Because it belongs to a cross-dock. Its reservation is managed by the cross-dock, against the goods that came in on its receipt; re-allocating, releasing, editing the lines or going back to draft would work against the floor inventory. To redo it, cancel the cross-dock. See Cancel a cross-dock.

Can the customer cancel their own shipment?

Only if they created it from the portal, it is still a draft and no truck is linked. Once the warehouse confirms it, changes go through the warehouse. See Request a shipment from the portal.