Bring flexibility to your order fulfillment process on Shopify

You can now split and merge items/products within the same order, bringing more flexibility to your fulfillment process. With this update, you can now fulfill partial orders, fulfill items across multiple locations, and, as a B2B merchant, split large quantity orders into multiple shipments.

Automation of your order preparation

If you set up your orders for automatic fulfillment, then the order is automatically marked as fulfilled once it is paid for. Automatic fulfillment can be used if you exclusively sell digital downloads or digital gift cards. Customers who purchase digital products automatically receive a download link via email and the order is marked as fulfilled.

Manual preparation of your own orders

If you set up your orders for manual fulfillment, you must then open your orders and fulfill the items online. You can fulfill part of an order manually by fulfilling certain items online. This is also known as partial fulfillment. To speed up the manual fulfillment process, you can fulfill multiple orders at the same time.

Grow your business

Want to save time and money on order fulfillment? You can use Shopify Shipping to purchase and print shipping labels from your Shopify admin.

Sort orders by preparation date

This feature is in beta and is only available to certain merchants.

You can view and sort the orders you need to fulfill using the fulfillment date on the Orders page of your Shopify admin. The fulfillment date is the latest date you can ship an order to ensure that it is delivered within the estimated delivery window that was communicated to the customer in the sales channel or online store.

Manual preparation of entire orders

Ensure that the Automatically prepare order items option is not selected in your payment settings, under Order processing. For more information, refer to the section Setting up order processing and archiving.

From your Shopify admin, go to Orders. Click the order number for an order that hasn't been fulfilled. Optional: If you use multiple locations and want to change the location from which you fulfill your order, click … on the fulfillment card, then select Change location. Select the location you want to use and click Save. The location can only be changed for orders that require shipping, not for local delivery or pickup orders. Do one of the following: If you use Shopify Shipping to purchase a shipping label for your order, then select Create shipping label. If you are using a carrier other than Shopify Shipping, then click Prepare item(s) and enter your carrier's tracking number. The tracking URL appears in the customer's shipping confirmation and update emails. Note Shopify may recognize the tracking number format and choose a carrier for you. If there is no carrier or the wrong carrier has been chosen, then select your carrier from the Shipping carrier drop-down menu. Optional: To immediately send a notification email to the customer, select Send shipping details to your customer now. This option is only available if you have an email address for the customer in your file. Click "Prepare item." Once you click "Prepare item," the preparation information is updated for the customer, and the order is marked as prepared in your Shopify admin. Customers also receive an email with shipping details if you chose to send shipping details to the customer.

Manual preparation of individual items

Manually preparing individual items can be useful for handling larger orders or those that require shipping in multiple parts. In your Shopify admin, navigate to the orders page and select an unfulfilled order. Click "Prepare item(s)" for each item you want to prepare, and enter the preparation details for each one.

Order consolidation

Another key feature of this update is the ability to merge orders. This option is useful if a customer places multiple orders in a short period of time and you want to group them together to save on shipping costs. From the orders page, select the orders you want to merge, then click "Merge Orders."

Conclusion

The Shopify order fulfillment update brings considerable flexibility to your fulfillment process. Whether you're looking to save time by automatically fulfilling orders, improve the management of large orders through partial manual fulfillment, or optimize shipping costs by combining orders, these new features are designed to improve your operational efficiency and increase customer satisfaction. Ultimately, these changes help make your Shopify business more agile and adaptable to your specific needs.
More information on https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/orders/fulfillment/fulfilling-orders/fulfill-your-own#split-a-fulfillment