About Automated Exports
When you sell a product on pre-order, Purple Dot holds the shopper's order until it is ready for fulfillment. When you are ready to fulfill it, Purple Dot releases the hold on the order, or part of the order, and exports it to your e-commerce platform. You can export orders manually in the merchant portal or enable automated exports.
Automated exports off: You control when orders are exported by manually exporting a waitlist or an individual pre-order.
Automated exports on: Purple Dot monitors your inventory and exports orders when stock is available for all items in a pre-order, or all items in an individual shipment if the pre-order contains multiple shipments.
Enable automated exports if your stock arrives regularly and you want orders to move to fulfillment without monitoring the merchant portal.
Keep automated exports off if you prefer to review each waitlist or pre-order before releasing it for fulfillment.
How it works
When automation is enabled, Purple Dot checks stock availability and exports eligible shipments according to your export settings.
1. Stock becomes available. Purple Dot monitors stock levels in your store. If you provide inventory data through an ERP, Purple Dot monitors that feed instead. Allocation begins when stock becomes available for a pre-order product, subject to your export schedule.
2. Stock is allocated to the oldest orders first. For example, if you receive 50 units and have 200 orders waiting for one unit each, stock is allocated to the 50 oldest orders. The remaining orders continue to wait. This follows a first-in, first-out approach.
3. Purple Dot checks that the entire shipment has stock. A pre-order can contain one or more shipments. Purple Dot checks each shipment separately and proceeds only when every item in that shipment has stock allocated. If any item is still awaiting stock, the shipment remains on hold unless you have enabled partial exports (see below). Items with allocated stock show Stock available on the pre-order page.
4. The shipment is exported. Once every item in a shipment shows Stock available, the shipment is eligible for export to your e-commerce platform. If the order was paid in full at checkout, no further payment is collected at export. Otherwise, Purple Dot charges the remaining balance before releasing the order. After a successful export, the order's status changes to Exported, and the order appears in your e-commerce platform, ready for fulfillment.
5. Failed exports are retried automatically. If an export fails, Purple Dot retries it later. See If there's an error below for details.
Note: “Stock available” and “Exported” are different statuses. A shipment can have stock allocated without being exported. It may be waiting for the next scheduled export time or for a retry after an error.
Turning automated exports on or off
To turn automated exports on:
Go to Settings → Operations.
Find Automation and enable the toggle.
Review the confirmation message and select Turn on automation.
Configure your options for full or partial exports and your export schedule.
Important: Enabling automation immediately exports eligible orders with stock already available. If you have stock that is not ready for fulfillment, keep automation off until you are ready to release those orders.
To turn automated exports off, disable the toggle. Orders that have already been exported remain exported. You will need to export subsequent orders manually.
Additional settings
These options are available under Settings → Operations once automation is enabled.
1. Full or partial exports
Option | What happens | Recommended when… |
|---|---|---|
Full exports only | Purple Dot waits until stock is available for every item in a shipment, then exports the items together. | You want to keep each shipment together and avoid additional shipping costs. |
Split with partial exports | Purple Dot exports each item as stock becomes available, allowing items to ship separately. | You prioritize shipping available items sooner over minimizing shipping costs. |
Partial exports can create additional shipments for which the shopper has not paid shipping costs.
2. Export schedule
Option | What happens | Recommended when… |
|---|---|---|
As soon as stock arrives | Purple Dot allocates stock and exports eligible shipments as soon as stock becomes available. | You want orders to move to fulfillment as quickly as possible. |
Only at these times | Purple Dot allocates stock and exports eligible shipments only at the two times you select each day. | Your warehouse processes orders in batches, or you prefer predictable daily export windows. |
Scheduled times use your store's time zone, which is displayed below the time pickers. Select Save after making changes.
If there's an error
Purple Dot automatically retries failed exports, with an interval between attempts.
Payment failures: For orders that are not fully paid, Purple Dot retries payment no more than once every 24 hours. More frequent attempts can cause the payment provider to block the card.
Other errors: The interval between retries increases with each attempt, up to a maximum of 24 hours.
Updated payment details: When a shopper updates their card, Purple Dot retries the order immediately.
Payment grace period: For orders that are not fully paid upfront, shoppers have 7 days by default to resolve a payment issue before the order is automatically canceled. You can extend this period under Settings → Operations.
If automation is unavailable
If you cannot enable automated exports, check the following:
Reason | What to do |
|---|---|
Stripe is not connected. | Connect your Stripe account, then return to the automation settings. |
Purple Dot is not configured to monitor your in-stock inventory. | Enable in-stock inventory monitoring. Disabling inventory monitoring also turns off automation, because automated exports depend on stock levels. |
Automated exports have been disabled for your account. | Contact Purple Dot support for assistance. |