Last updated: Sep 18, 2026 at 3:39PM
When a customer buys on Macy's, Macy's takes the unit off its own site straight away and then spends up to a couple of hours running fraud and payment checks before asking you to accept the order. Nothing else knows during that window. Shopify still says the unit is available, so Nordstrom keeps selling it, and you end up having to decline someone's order.
Osello closes that window. The moment a marketplace tells us an order exists, the units on it are held back from every other channel's quantities and the new numbers go out within seconds.
What it looks like
Take a SKU with 1 in stock, listed on Macy's and Nordstrom.
- A customer buys it on Macy's at 1:00 PM.
- Osello picks the order up a minute later and holds the unit.
- Macy's and Nordstrom are both told 0. Nordstrom can't sell it.
- Macy's finishes its checks at 1:30 PM and asks you to accept.
- Osello accepts, sends the order to Shopify, and Shopify claims the unit itself.
- The hold is released — Shopify's own count is now doing the job.
Without the hold, step 3 never happens and the customer who bought on Nordstrom at 1:05 PM gets their order declined.
Reservations are on by default
Every store has this on. To turn it off, open Settings from the sidebar, then the Inventory Settings tab, and switch off Reserve inventory for incoming orders. Anything currently held is released as soon as you save.
Turning it off means your marketplaces see the full stock while an order is pending, which is how Osello behaved before this existed.
When a hold is released
A hold never outlives the reason for it:
- Your store receives the order. For Shopify stores this is the usual ending: Shopify reduces the available count itself when the order lands, so Osello lets go at the same moment and your marketplaces never see the number move.
- The line is canceled, refused or refunded. Nobody owes those units any more, so they go straight back on sale.
- The line ships. This is the ending for stores with no connected store to push orders to, where the hold runs until the item is on its way.
- A day goes by with no decision. A marketplace that hasn't asked you to accept or refuse within 24 hours is a fault, not a normal wait. The units are released and our team is alerted. This should be rare.
Reading held stock
Everywhere Osello shows the quantity a marketplace was told, held units are already taken off. Hover over (or tap) the number to see what makes it up: the stock you have, how much is reserved for an order, and how much the inventory buffer is holding back if you use one.
Your product pages keep showing the real stock in your store. A reservation only changes what your marketplaces are told.
To see everything being held at once, open Orders in the sidebar and choose Inventory Reservations from the menu in the top right. Each row is one SKU held at one location for one order, and opening a row shows when it was taken, when it expires, and — once it's over — what released it.
Reservations and order acceptance
When a marketplace asks you to accept an order, Osello checks your real stock against what other orders are already holding. An order is only declined when the stock genuinely isn't there, and an order is never declined because of the units it reserved itself.
This is what decides the outcome when two marketplaces sell the same last unit in the same few minutes: the first order to arrive holds it, and the second is declined when its turn comes rather than both being accepted and one failing later.