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Setting Flexport fulfillment location priority in Shopify

  • If you set up our Shopify integration before July 11th, 2023, please refer to the latest steps here
  • Flexport is the former name of Flexport, and the Flexport Portal. However, there are applications which still have to retain the name Flexport. We apologize for any confusion caused and please feel free to reach out to our support team anytime

Each Shopify location is a fulfillment center (either real or virtual) that can track inventory levels for your SKUs. When new orders are created, Shopify will assign an order to a location depending on the location priority and availability of the SKUs in that order. If you wish to use this configuration, "Flexport" should be one of the locations in this list.

You must use the Shopify direct connection. You can visit Which Shopify Configuration Should I Use? to decide which configuration is right for you.

Setup Instructions

1) Disable automatic fulfillment

Login to your Shopify Account at accounts.shopify.com/store-login. Under Settings > Checkout > Order processing > After an order has been paid > enable Do not automatically fulfill any of the order's line items.

Don't worry -- the "Flexport" location will automatically import any unfulfilled orders.

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2) Set "Flexport" location as the top fulfillment priority

This will ensure that orders are routed to Flexport by default if no other option is specified or available.

Recommended: Set 'Flexport' as the top location in the priority list. This means that if multiple locations are able to fulfill a given order (the locations have available inventory for all of the SKUs on the order), then Shopify will assign the order to Flexport.

Optional: Change the priority list as desired to match the preferred order in which you want locations to fulfill orders. See the Shopify Help Center for more details.

3) Create a dummy location for stockouts (Optional)

Optional. Complete this step only if you plan to accept backorders AND if those orders will ultimately be fulfilled by another 3PL (who does not already have a location in Shopify).

Stockouts happen when a specific location is out of stock (has 0 inventory) for a given SKU. The intended behavior for stockouts is:

  • When the "Flexport" location is out of stock, the order will automatically be assigned to other locations (warehouses) based on the priority. These other locations will fulfill the order if their inventory levels have the inventory in stock to fulfill the order.
  • If all of your other locations also out of stock, then "Flexport" (the app location) will automatically ingest the order. To avoid this ingestion (and us subsequently canceling the order), we recommend you create a dummy location and assign it 10,000 units for each product.

This dummy location can be virtual just to hold onto the backorders without cancelling them. It can also be a real location (your own warehouse or another 3PL partner) who actually has the item in stock. This is up to you, the merchant, on how you plan to fulfill orders outside of Flexport.

Once orders are assigned to the dummy location, you can either:

A) Assign to your other warehouse or fulfillment provider to fulfill. This process is up to you, the merchant to setup a partner and process for orders that do not plan to fulfill via Flexport.

B) After you have inbounded new units into Flexport and confirmed that we have those units in stock, then delete the dummy location and reassign those orders to the "Flexport" location.

  • Please confirm in the Flexport Portal that we have available units for those SKUs. If they are not available yet, then we will import and subsequently cancel the orders.

Note: Do not enable the 'Continue selling while out of stock' option feature in Shopify.

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Preorders

Read our help center article How to handle preorders in Shopify for more details.

Additional Notes

1) You must use the Shopify direct connection

2) Check that every location has a shipping rate

  • This is done by default when you create a new location as done above.
  • Accidental changes to these shipping rates, or changes to these shipping rates by other Shopify plugins can cause a location or a SKU to not have a shipping rate. This can cause orders not to properly import from Shopify.
  • Learn more about how to troubleshoot missing rates.

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