If you have a Shopify store, you can use Printful as a backup fulfillment facility in the following cases:
- Your primary facilities run out of stock
- Your primary facility can’t produce products fast enough
- Specific product variants aren’t available in your primary fulfillment location
These are the steps to set up an automatic backup facility:
- Sync the product you want to fulfill with Printful:
- You can do this when your primary location runs out of stock.
- You can sync your products proactively while your primary location still has items, so Printful can automatically fulfill the orders once the other facilities run out of stock.
*Note: If you enable the Import existing products feature, all existing products on the Shopify side will be imported to Printful. These products will be unsynced till you manually sync them.
- Arrange the stock and the fulfillment locations according to your priorities:
- If you added a product through Printful, you must add stock in other fulfillment locations. You can do this by viewing the product through the Shopify Dashboard and selecting a variant. Then, head over to the Inventory section and choose Edit locations.
- Choose the locations where you want to fulfill a specific variant.
- After you’ve added all the necessary locations, you’ll need to add stock for non-Printful locations. You can do this under the Inventory section in the product variant settings.
- Once you’ve added the stock to all the locations where fulfillment is available, you need to set up fulfillment priorities. Go to your Shopify Dashboard > Settings > Locations > Location priority. Remember that these priorities will affect all products throughout your Shopify store.
If you have imported an existing product from Shopify to Printful, you must manually sync it by selecting the product on the Printful side.
Once you’ve synced the product, we’ll automatically adjust the stock for the Printful location. Haven’t set stock for non-Printful locations? In that case, this will need to be done on the Shopify Dashboard by viewing the product and selecting a product variant under the Inventory section in the product variant settings.
Once all locations have stock, you can arrange fulfillment location priorities.
You can do this in the Shopify Dashboard under Settings > Locations. Remember that these priorities will affect all products throughout your Shopify store.Once you complete all the steps, Printful will be set up as a backup facility. If your primary locations run out of stock, Shopify will request the order fulfillment to the next facility with inventory in the prioritized facilities list.
- Choose the locations where you want to fulfill a specific variant.
- If you added a product through Printful, you must add stock in other fulfillment locations. You can do this by viewing the product through the Shopify Dashboard and selecting a variant. Then, head over to the Inventory section and choose Edit locations.
