1. Purpose
Clear the oldest orders first when a backlog has built up, instead of mixing them in with everything that arrived today.
2. Scope
Generating missions against an age cutoff. Finding individual urgent orders is covered in SWI-015.
3. Roles & Responsibilities
Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|
Warehouse manager | Sets the cutoff and decides how far back to work. |
Shift lead | Runs the backlog missions before the day's normal waves. |
4. When you need this
A backlog has built up over a weekend, a closure, or a busy period.
Older orders keep being pushed down the queue by newer ones.
You are working to a service promise measured from order date.
5. Key concept: a cutoff excludes the new, it does not include the old
What people assume | What actually happens |
|---|---|
Generating missions always sweeps everything eligible. | It does, unless you give it a cutoff. Without one, today's orders compete with the backlog for the same pickers. |
The cutoff is a priority weighting. | It is a hard filter. Orders newer than the cutoff are simply not considered for that mission. |
You have to clear the whole backlog in one wave. | You do not. Move the cutoff forward a day at a time and work it down in controlled batches. |
6. Procedure
Go to the Missions screen.
Click Generate Missions.
Set the Order Cutoff to the date you want to work back to, for example yesterday or two days ago.
Generate. Only orders older than that cutoff are included.
Pick and ship that mission before generating the next.
Repeat, moving the cutoff forward, until the backlog is clear.
7. Verification
The generated mission contains only orders older than your cutoff.
Today's orders remain unwaved and available for the next normal wave.
The count of unwaved older orders falls after each pass.
8. Constraints and caveats
The cutoff works on order age, not urgency. An overnight order that arrived this morning is newer than the cutoff and will be excluded, so run the urgent check in SWI-015 alongside this, not instead of it.
Orders still waiting on stock will not be included regardless of age. Check for unallocated orders separately.
Clearing a backlog oldest-first can mean picking the same SKU across several missions. Combine with a sensible mission strategy if travel time matters.
9. Worked example
A brand onboarding through a 3PL asked how to stop older orders being buried under each day's new arrivals across their Shopify, Etsy, eBay and Amazon channels.
Observation | Reading |
|---|---|
Every generation pulled in the newest orders alongside the backlog. | Expected with no cutoff set. The backlog never gets dedicated picker time. |
Setting the cutoff to two days ago produced a mission of only older orders. | Correct. That mission can be worked to completion before today's volume is touched. |
The backlog cleared over several passes rather than one. | Intended. Moving the cutoff forward a day at a time keeps each mission a manageable size. |