Fulfilling orders using custom fulfillment services

You can use custom fulfillment services to fulfill your orders, provided that the fulfillment service can process orders by email. After you activate a custom fulfillment service and assign products to it, you fulfill orders by marking them as fulfilled in your Shopify admin, which sends an email to your fulfillment service with the order details.

If your fulfillment service requires more than an email to process orders, then you can hire a Shopify Partner to develop a custom app that integrates directly with Shopify. Learn more about fulfilling orders using a fulfillment service with an app.

Custom fulfillment services support inventory management for multiple locations and apps. You can stock the same product at both your custom fulfillment service location and your own locations simultaneously. This can be useful when you want to keep backup inventory at your warehouse or fulfill urgent orders from your own stock, although you use the fulfillment service for standard orders.

Activate a custom fulfillment service

When you activate a custom fulfillment service in your Shopify admin, it creates a fulfillment location where you can stock products. After you activate the service, you can assign products to it and send fulfillment requests by email whenever an order is placed.

Steps:

Assign products to your custom fulfillment service

After you activate a custom fulfillment service, you need to assign products to it so that the service can fulfill orders for those products.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Products.

2. Click the product to be fulfilled by the custom service.

3. In the Inventory section, select the fulfillment service that you want to use from the Inventory will be stocked at drop-down menu.

4. Click Save.

Requesting fulfillment from your custom fulfillment service

You can mark a full order or part of an order as fulfilled. An email is sent to your fulfillment service with the order and customer details, including which items to ship.

If items in an order are fulfilled by different services or shipped in separate packages, then some items might be delivered to your customers before others. An order displays a Fulfilled status only after all items are shipped.

When you mark an order as fulfilled, you can include tracking information and send your customers a fulfillment notification.

If you use automatic fulfillment, then orders are automatically marked as fulfilled when the order is paid, and you don't need to complete the fulfillment steps manually.

Tracking fulfillment progress

Unlike fulfillment services that integrate with Shopify through an app, custom fulfillment services don't automatically update the order status in your Shopify admin. You need to track fulfillment progress by communicating with your fulfillment service directly, such as by email or through their website.

When your fulfillment service ships an order, you can manually update the order in your Shopify admin with tracking information so that your customers can track their shipments.

If your custom fulfillment service doesn't provide tracking numbers, then you can mark the order as delivered after your customer receives it. Otherwise, the order remains in the On its way status on the order status page.

Canceling or changing a fulfillment

To cancel or make changes to a fulfillment, contact your custom fulfillment service directly. After you contact your fulfillment service to cancel a fulfillment, you can manually update the order status in your Shopify admin.

Delete a custom fulfillment service

If you no longer want to use a custom fulfillment service, then you can delete it from your Shopify admin. If your account with the fulfillment service remains active, then you can reactivate the service at any time.

If there's inventory assigned to the service, then you need to select a new location to inherit the stocked inventory and unfulfilled orders before you can delete the service. You can change the fulfillment location on your product pages.

If there isn't an option to delete the fulfillment service that you want to remove from your admin, then you can find it on the Apps page instead.

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