Scheduled Ship Date

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When to use it

Scheduled Ship Date is for the customer-facing case where one or more lines on an active sales order need to ship later than the rest. Common examples:

• Customer asked you to hold a specific line for a future jobsite delivery.
• One backordered line has a known restock date and the customer wants the rest of the order to ship now.
• A mixed order has services or kits with longer lead times and the customer needs visibility into when each line will ship.

The schedule is per line. You can defer a single line or every line. The non-deferred lines on the order keep their existing ship-as-soon-as-ready behavior.

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How to set or change the date

1. Open the order detail page.
2. In the line-item table, find the line you need to defer.
3. Click the ship-date pill on that line. It may read Ships ASAP, show a short date such as Jun 1, or read Released if the line is already in the pack queue.
4. In the Schedule ship date modal, set the Requested ship date. Clear the date to return the line to ship-as-soon-as-ready behavior.
5. If the customer or warehouse needs context, add a Reason. The reason is optional, but if customer email is enabled it is included in the customer notification.
6. Click Save.

When the line saves, three things happen automatically:

1. The customer receives a Scheduled ship date set email listing every line on the order that is currently scheduled, with each line’s SKU, item title, quantity, and ship date.
2. The order timeline records the schedule change.
3. The next time the order PDF is generated, a Ship Date column appears on the line-item table so the customer can see at a glance which lines ship now and which lines ship later.

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Release a scheduled line early

Use release when the customer calls back and asks you to ship a deferred line today, or when stock arrives earlier than expected.

1. Open the order detail page.
2. Find the deferred line. Deferred lines show a dated pill and a Release link.
3. Click Release.
4. In the Release line for immediate pack modal, enter an override reason. Arcus requires at least 5 characters.
5. Click Release now.

Expected result: Arcus changes the line to Released, logs the override reason, and adds the line to today’s pack queue. The scheduled date is no longer holding that line back.

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Locked or disabled states

• If the line shows Released, the schedule pill is read-only because the line has already moved into the pack queue.
• If the line-item table is locked because the order is cancelled, fulfilled, posted, actively labeled, or otherwise protected, the ship-date pill is disabled with the same lock reason as the line editor.
• If a date picker will not allow a past date, choose today for immediate release or use the Release action on an already scheduled future line.

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What the customer sees

The customer email is transactional. It announces the scheduled date, shows a table of every line currently on the schedule, and includes a link back to the customer portal. If you set a Ship Hold Reason, the reason appears as a friendly note in the email so the customer understands why the line was held. The order PDF shows a Ship Date column on the line-item table only when at least one line on the order has a scheduled ship date. Orders that ship normally render with the standard column set and no extra noise. Each line cell on the PDF reads one of three values:

• A formatted ship date (e.g. “May 29, 2026”) for lines that are scheduled.
• “Ships ASAP” for lines on the same order that are not scheduled.
• “Released” for scheduled lines that have already been released into the pack queue by the auto-release scheduler or a manual release action.

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Auto-release and the scheduler

The system runs a scheduler that auto-releases scheduled lines on their ship date so the warehouse picks them on schedule without manual intervention. The customer email at scheduling time is the proactive notification; the standard shipment notification fires at fulfillment time once the package ships.

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Disabling the customer email

The customer email is on by default. To turn it off for the entity:

1. Open Settings then Notifications.
2. Locate the “Scheduled ship date set” toggle under Transactional emails.
3. Turn the toggle off and save.

The toggle is per entity. Customers cannot opt out individually because the email is transactional under CAN-SPAM (it announces a state change on the customer’s own order).

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Cross-references

• Order Fulfillment: how scheduled lines flow into the pack queue.
• Order Exceptions: how to handle a scheduled line whose date passes without release.
• Customer Notifications: full catalog of customer-facing emails and which toggles control them.