Fulfilling your own orders
Fulfill your orders by packaging and shipping products without a fulfillment service.
On this page
- Fulfill your own orders automatically
- Fulfill your own orders manually
- Fulfill part of an order manually
- Fulfilling orders for multiple locations
- Change the location of a fulfillment
- Fulfill multiple orders at the same time
- Split a fulfillment
- Merge a fulfillment
- Fulfillment holds
- Manual fulfillment holds
- System fulfillment holds
- Cancel a fulfillment (automatic and manual fulfillments)
Fulfill your own orders automatically
If you set your orders to fulfill automatically, then the order is automatically marked as fulfilled after it's paid.
Automatic fulfillment can be used if you exclusively sell digital downloads or digital gift cards. Customers who purchase digital products are automatically emailed a download link and the order is marked as fulfilled.
Fulfill your own orders manually
If you set your orders to fulfill manually, then you need to open your orders and fulfill the line items.
You can fulfill part of an order manually by fulfilling some line items. This is also called partial fulfillment. To make the manual fulfillment process faster, you can fulfill multiple orders at the same time.
Sorting orders using the fulfill by date
You can view and sort the orders that you need to fulfill, using the Fulfill by date on the Orders page of your Shopify admin. The Fulfill by date is the latest date that you can ship an order to ensure that the order is delivered within the estimated delivery window, which was communicated to the customer in the sales channel or online store.
Fulfill entire orders manually
Fulfill part of an order manually
If a customer placed and paid for an order with multiple items, and one or more of the items are out-of-stock or a preorder, then you might want to fulfill part of the order so that you can ship the items separately.
Steps:
Fulfilling orders for multiple locations
If a customer has placed and paid for an order of multiple products, and one or more of the products are stocked at different locations, then you can fulfill parts of the order separately based on the location of your inventory. You can set location priorities to specify the priority sequence for order fulfillment.
Steps:
Change the location of a fulfillment
If you need to change the location of a fulfillment, for reasons such as stock availability, associated shipping costs, or the need for an expedited delivery, then you can change the location of any unfulfilled orders to fulfill items in that order from a new fulfillment location.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.
Select the order that you want to change location for.
Click the ... button.
Click Change location.
From the Location drop-down menu, select a new fulfillment location.
In the Items section, click the up or down arrow to adjust the quantity and select the items that you want to change the fulfillment location for.
Click Save.
Fulfill multiple orders at the same time
By selecting several orders, you can use the Mark as Fulfilled button to fulfill them at the same time. This applies to stores that manually fulfill orders. If you aren't using Shopify Shipping, then you need to add tracking numbers to the orders.
Steps:
Split a fulfillment
You can split a fulfillment order, line items, and quantities into new fulfillment orders to get products to a customer faster. For example, if one of the items in the order is out-of-stock, then you can remove it from the order so that the remaining items can be delivered to customers as soon as possible. The out-of-stock item is later delivered in a separate package.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.
Select the order that you want to split a fulfillment for.
Click the ... button.
Click Split.
Use the up or down arrow to adjust the quantity and select the items that you want to split.
Merge a fulfillment
You can merge a set or multiple sets of fulfillment orders from the same location together into one based on line items and quantities. Merging a fulfillment can help simplify your fulfillment process and reduce shipping costs.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.
Select the order that you want to merge a fulfillment for.
Click the ... button.
Click Merge.
Use the up or down arrow to adjust the quantity and select the items that you want to merge with an existing fulfillment in the same location.
Click Merge. Selected items are merged with an existing fulfillment in the same location.
Fulfillment holds
There are two kinds of fulfillment holds:
- Manual holds, which you can place on fulfillments at any time
- System holds, which are placed by back end systems, such as apps
Manual fulfillment holds
When issues arise that prevent you from fulfilling an order immediately, you can hold the fulfillment manually. Orders with a fulfillment hold have an On hold fulfillment status in your orders list. To organize and track your fulfillment work, you can use the fulfillment status to filter the orders that are ready to be fulfilled from the orders with fulfillment holds.
Hold a fulfillment
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.
Select the order that you want to place on fulfillment hold.
Click the ... button.
Click Hold fulfillment.
Select the items that you want to put on hold.
Select a reason for the hold.
Click Hold fulfillment.
Release a fulfillment
When the issues that prevented you from fulfilling an order are resolved, you can release the manual fulfillment hold. After the fulfillment is released, the order fulfillment status changes to Unfulfilled.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.
Select the order that you want to release from the fulfillment hold.
Select the items that you want to release from the fulfillment hold.
Click Release fulfillment.
System fulfillment holds
System fulfillment holds occur when an app or other back-end system places a fulfillment on hold automatically. For example, when upsell offers are presented to customers at checkout, the order fulfillment status is set to On hold until the customer completes their order. If a customer doesn't complete a checkout, then the order status remains On hold to allow the customer time to return to the order and complete their checkout.
When an order is On hold you can reserve inventory for the order, but you can't fulfill the order until the fulfillment hold is released, and the order fulfillment status changes to Unfulfilled.
There are four types of system holds:
- Pending upsell offer
- Pending Marketplace Partner authorization
- Pending Markets Pro authorization
- Unknown delivery date
Cancel a fulfillment (automatic and manual fulfillments)
When you cancel a fulfillment, the fulfillment status of the order returns to Unfulfilled, and you can buy a new shipping label or create a new fulfillment for the order.
If you have purchased a shipping label, then you must void it before you can cancel the fulfillment.
From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.
From the Orders page, click the number of an order in the list that has a Fulfillment status of Fulfilled.
In the Fulfillments section, click the ... button.
Click Cancel fulfillment.