Once your Shopify store is connected, you do not have to do anything for an order to ship. Here is what happens behind the scenes, step by step.
#1. The order arrives
When a shopper checks out, Shopify tells us about the order right away. It shows up in your portal next to every other order you have with us, marked as coming from that store.
#2. We work out what to ship
Each line is matched to one of your products, using the match on the store's Products tab or, failing that, the SKU. See Matching Shopify products.
If the cart mixes our merch with products you ship yourself, the store's mixed cart setting decides what happens:
- Refuse the whole order, so nothing ships until you look at it.
- Fulfil only the items we stock, and leave the rest to you.
#3. Checks before anything ships
An order can be held for review instead of shipping. That happens when:
- The payment has not cleared. A card payment that has not completed is always held. For bank transfer, invoice or cash on delivery orders, the store's Payments setting decides whether to hold until paid or ship anyway.
- A protection rule matches. See Store protection rules.
- The address does not verify under the store's address rules.
- We do not have the stock. The order waits instead of being dropped.
#4. It ships from the closest warehouse
The order goes to the nearest of our warehouses that has everything in stock, following the store's Regions and routing settings. We pick it, pack it and hand it to the carrier.
#5. Tracking goes back to Shopify
When the order ships, we create the fulfillment in Shopify with the carrier and tracking number, so it reads as fulfilled in your Shopify admin with a working tracking link. If Shopify does not accept the update the first time, we retry it automatically.
#Cancellations and returns
- Cancelled with us. If an order is cancelled on our side before it ships, we cancel it in Shopify too and the shopper is refunded through Shopify.
- Returned. When a shipped order is marked returned, the refund is processed in Shopify.