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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Getting Started


After a customer has purchased or ordered a product from one of your Active Sales Channels, these products will appear and be customized in your store's Orders Page. This page will focus specifically on processing these orders after a customer has purchased a product and updating the orders through the entire purchasing process. For more information on ordering and related actions, check out more at Shopify's Orders.


Concerning orders, this page will focus on explaining and detailing How to Fulfill Your Own Orders.


Fulfilling Your Store's Orders


Your store can fulfill its own orders by shipping and packaging orders without a shipping service.


There are multiple ways to fulfill your store's orders. The ways that will be addressed in this article are:

  • Fulfilling Orders Automatically
  • Fulfilling Orders Manually
  • Fulfilling Part of an Order Manually
  • Fulfilling Orders for Multiple Locations
  • Fulfilling Multiple Orders at the Same Time
  • Managing Manual Fulfillment Holds
  • Cancelling a Fulfillment (Manual or Automatic)


Fulfilling Orders Automatically

If your store has set orders to Automatic Fulfillment, then orders will be set as fulfilled after payment is posted.


Automatic Fulfillment works especially well with Digital Downloads and Digital Gift Cards. This is especially useful as these download links and information are emailed directly to the customer after purchase.


Fulfilling Orders Manually

If your store has set orders to Manual Fulfillment, then your store will have to open orders and manually fulfill line items.


It is also possible to fulfill only part of an order manually. See Fulfilling Part of an Order Manually below. In order to mroe efficiently fulfill orders manually, it is possible to fulfill multiple orders at once. In order to do so, see Fulfilling Multiple Orders at the Same Time below.


In order to fulfill an entire order manually, follow these steps:

  1. From your MyShopify home page, select Orders
  2. From the Orders page, select the unfulfilled order
  3. Complete any needed shipping / packaging information
  4. Select Fulfill Item(s) to fulfill the order



Fulfilling Part of an Order Manually

If a customer has placed an order with multiple items that are currently out of stock or under pre-order, your store has the option to partially fulfill an order so that the customer can receive any of the ordered in-stock items as quickly as possible.


Partial fulfillment of orders cannot be done automatically, only manually


When partially fulfilling an order, you have the option to use Shopify Shipping or whatever other means your store uses. This article will cover both.


In order to partially fulfill an order when using Shopify Shipping, follow these steps:

  1. From your MyShopify home page, select Orders
  2. From the Orders page, select the unfulfilled order
  3. To purchase a shipping label for your store, click Create Shipping Label
  4. From the following Fulfillment page, fill in the number of products being fulfilled in the Items section
  5. In the Shipping Service section, input the appropriate shipping information
  6. OPTIONAL: If the customer's email address is on file, then select Send Shipment Details to Customer Now to email an order receipt to the customer
  7. Select Buy Shipping Label. Following this, the items in the order will be appropriately marked as either Fulfilled or Unfulfilled


Fulfilling Orders for Multiple Locations

Oftentimes, when a store has multiple locations or has partner stores, it is possible to fulfill orders with multiple products across several stores, if available. This means that it is possible to fulfill parts of orders individually across multiple locations. In order to do so, follow these steps:

  1. From your MyShopify home page, select Orders
  2. From the Orders page, select the unfulfilled order. If the order cannot be fulfilled from the stock of a single location, other location-based options will be shown
  3. Select Mark as Fulfilled and complete all of the shipping information
  4. Select Fulfill Items to mark the item(s) as fulfilled


Fulfilling Multiple Orders at the Same Time

In cases where there are multiple orders that need to be fulfilled, your store has the option to fulfill more than one order at a time. Fulfilling multiple orders at once is not possible with Automatic Order Fulfillment, only Manual Order Fulfillment. In order to fulfill multiple orders at the same time, follow these steps:

  1. From your MyShopify home page, select Orders
  2. From the Orders page, select and highlight the check boxes of the unfulfilled orders being fulfilled
  3. Click Mark as Fulfilled
  4. OPTIONAL: Select the Send a Notification to the Customer check box to notify customers
  5. Click Mark as Fulfilled



Managing Manual Fulfillment Holds

Fulfillment holds occur when order fulfillments are set to On Hold. This is commonly seen when Upsell Offers are presented to customer at checkout; this On Hold status will be removed when the customer completes their order. If the customer does not complete the order immediately, it will remain On Hold for one hour to allow the customer to return to and complete the order.


While the order is set to On Hold, your store has the ability to reserve inventory for it; you cannot fulfill the order, however, until the fulfillment hold is released and its status is set to Unfulfilled.


Likewise, if there are issues that prevent a store from fulfilling an order, fulfillment can be held manually. When setting orders to On Hold, remember:

  • Fulfillments can be held, but individual items in an order cannot
  • If any part of an order is marked as unfulfilled, then the entire order will appear under the Unfulfilled tag instead of On Hold


Holding Fulfillments

In order to manually hold a fulfillment, follow these steps:

  1. From your MyShopify home page, select Orders
  2. From the Orders page, select the order that will be manually held
  3. In the order status section, select the ... button > Hold Fulfillment
  4. Input the reason for the holding
  5. Select Hold Fulfillment



Releasing Fulfillments

When the issues preventing fulfillment of an order are resolved, the manually held order can be released. After the fulfillment is released, the order status will change from On Hold to Unfulfilled.

  1. From your MyShopify home page, select Orders
  2. From the Orders page, select the order that will be manually released
  3. Select Release Fulfillment


Canceling a Fulfillment (Manual and Automatic)

When canceling a fulfillment, the order status will shift from Fulfilled back to Unfulfilled. From here, new shipping methods and information will need to be input. Canceling fulfillments can be done either with manual or automatic fulfillments. Remember: purchased shipping labels must be voided before inputting the new shipping information. If your store uses a third-party fulfillment service, that service must be contacted in order to complete the fulfillment cancellation. In order to complete a fulfillment cancellation, follow these steps:

  1. From your MyShopify home page, select Orders
  2. From the Orders page, select the order that will be canceled
  3. From the order status section, click the ... button > Cancel Fulfillment



Additional Information


For more information on how to Fulfill a Store's Orders, check out Shopify's article on Fulfilling Your Own Orders.