Integrating Shopify (www.shopify.com) with Shipwire for order fulfillment and real-time inventory couldn’t be easier. You can enable Shipwire by completing the following instructions:

Enabling the Shipwire Order Fulfillment Service

First, click the Fulfillment Services tab in your Shopify admin’s preferences. Click the activate button at the bottom right of the Shipwire section. Then enter your Shipwire Account Email and Password into the corresponding text boxes provided and click the Save button. You can also check the Use Test Mode checkbox to use the Shipwire test environment. Enabling the test mode is a great way to test fulfilling items without really having them shipped out by Shipwire.

Configuring your Products

Now that Shipwire has been enabled as a fulfillment service you can configure individual products to be fulfilled by Shipwire. Additionally, you can configure Shopify to update your product’s inventory levels every 24 hours using the Shipwire real-time inventory service. Please note that you must add your product to Shipwire before creating your product in Shopify. Shopify verifies your product’s SKU exists in your Shipwire account when creating or updating a product that uses Shipwire for fulfillment.

Enabling Shipwire Fulfillment for New Products

To create a new product that uses Shipwire for fulfillment you just need to enter your product’s SKU and select shipped by Shipwire from the following dropdown menu in the Inventory section of the new product form. By default, Shopify also enables the Shipwire real-time inventory service. You can change that selection to use Shopify’s inventory management, or disbable inventory management altogether in the following drop down menu. If you do choose to use the real-time inventory service, your product’s inventory levels will be updated once every 24 hours with a real-time count from Shipwire. In between updates from Shipwire your product will use Shopify’s inventory management system to ensure that your product is not oversold.

Enabling Shipwire Fulfillment for Existing Products

Enabling Shipwire fulfillment for an existing product is similar to the process used when creating a new product. Click the product you want to be fulfilled with Shipwire in the Products page of the Shopify admin interface. Then edit the product variation you want to fulfill with Shipwire, under the “Variations” heading. Locate the Inventory section and follow the directions in the previous paragraph for enabling Shipwire. Make sure you click the “Save changes” button when you have finished with your configuration.

Sending Sold Line Items to Shipwire for Fulfillment

Now that you have enabled Shipwire and have products using Shipwire for fulfillment you will have to instruct Shipwire to fulfill the product when it is sold. To do this you view the order in the Shopify admin inteface and then you click the Ship items button above the order summary. Select the items you want fulfilled, click the Ship items button at the bottom of the table and the line items will be automatically send to Shipwire for fulfillment. You can then view the details of the fulfillment in the order history on the right side of the screen by clicking the link detailing the fulfillment.

Diagnosing Problems Sending Orders to Shipwire

First, check if your store is configured correctly, by signing into your account and reviewing the instructions under the Sell tab. Second, check if your store is synchronizing inventory with Shipwire. If so, try temporarily turning this feature off, and trying again. Inventory synchronization typically occurs once a day. When starting up a new Shipwire account, this may cause problems until your initial inventory is available.

If you didn’t find the answer to your question here, please see the Shopify section of the Shipwire Forum.