When you prevent further processing on an order through an exception, you are placing a hold on the order.

Order Management enables you to hold an order, return, order line, or return line from continuing to progress through its workflow by utilizing the holds feature. Holds can be applied manually or automatically based on a set of criteria you define, such as a credit check hold.

System Holds

• GSA (USA General Services Administration): Automatically stops order lines on which a GSA customer does not receive the lowest price for an item on all price lists.
• Credit hold: Automatically stops orders exceeding credit limits.
• Margin Hold: If the system is setup for margin calculation, and orders are enabled for same, any order or order line not meeting a minimum margin percentage is put on hold
• Export Compliance Hold: Order Management now provides inbuilt adapters to connect to partner International Trade Management applications for providing export screening on order lines. An order line failing the export compliance check would be automatically put on hold

User-defined:

• Item
• Customer
• Customer site
• Warehouse
• Combination

In release 11i Oracle Order Management, applying and releasing holds can be performed directly from the Sales Order Pad.  You can manually send a notification through Oracle Workflow to specific individuals when an order hold is applied. A concurrent program can automatically release holds based on the Hold Until date. Additionally, you can track and view history information on holds at the order and/or line level.

Notes

• Holds are assigned a Hold Type and are authorized for application and release for specific Responsibilities.
• You can define holds that are effective only at certain steps of the order or line workflow, as well as, holds that apply regardless of the stage in the order’s flow.   Holds can be defined to be specific for pick, pack, or ship activities.
• Holds may be designed to be applied automatically, or may be applied manually based on a set criteria you define.

Hold Sources

Hold sources allow you to apply a particular hold to a group of existing orders, returns, or their lines, and to new orders or lines meeting your criteria.  A hold source is the combination of a parameter (i.e. customer, item, order, wh) and hold name that you specify.  Hold sources are valuable when you want to hold all current and future orders for an item, customer, order, warehouse or customer site (bill-to and ship-to locations).  For example, you create a hold source to hold an unreleased item.  Once the item is available, you simply remove the hold source for the item, and all holds on individual order lines are released.  A hold source can:
•    Hold all existing and new orders, returns, or their lines that meet your hold source criteria.
•    Hold some existing and new orders, returns, or their lines from the Order Organizer window.
•    Hold only new orders, returns, or their lines that meet your hold criteria.

Credit Checking
You can automatically prevent shipping of products to customers with unacceptable outstanding credit exposure using automatic credit checking. 
In the Transaction Order Type set-up you may opt to have Credit Checking occur at Sales Order Booking, at Shipping, or both (which you may want if you have long lead times between Booking and Shipping).
The Credit Checking can be enabled in the following 3 places:
•    For the specific Payment Term
•    For the specific Customer
•    For the specific Transaction Order Type

You must define Credit Limits for each of your Customers.  You can determine balances to include when calculating total credit exposure, and set total exposure limits for a customer or customer site. 
These limits may default in with the Profile Class or be manually maintained in the Profile: Amounts alternate region in the Customer Master.
You must define a Credit Limit which is the total limit at any one time for the Customer, as well as an Order Credit Limit, which is specific to an individual sales order.
Oracle uses all of these criteria to place sales orders on Credit Check Hold.

 You can control who is authorized to release Credit Check holds when you want to make an exception or when the customer's credit balance is acceptable.
Also, Oracle maintains a complete audit trail of credit check holds so you can track who applied or removed each hold, the date it was applied or removed, and why.

Hold Release
Holds are released automatically when you supply a hold expiration date.  Once the date is reached, the
Order can proceed along its workflow.  Releasing a hold source release all the orders, returns, and lines to which that hold source applied.

Note:  You must set up and run Release Expired Holds concurrent program on a nightly basis to take advantage of the expiration date based release of holds.