You can use Printful as a backup fulfillment location in Shopify for situations like:
- Your primary inventory runs out of stock.
- Your main facility can’t produce products quickly enough.
- Certain product variants aren’t available in your primary warehouse.
With this setup, Shopify will automatically route orders to Printful when other locations can’t fulfill them.
How to set up Printful as a backup facility
1. Sync your products to Printful
You can sync products to Printful even while your primary warehouse still has stock. This ensures Printful is ready to fulfill orders as soon as your primary location runs out.
If you’re importing existing Shopify products:
- Use the Import existing products feature in your Printful Dashboard.
- These products will show as unsynced until you manually sync them.
2. Add stock to your other locations
In Shopify, you’ll need to add inventory to any non-Printful locations (e.g., your own warehouse or retail store).
Steps:
- Go to Shopify Admin → Products.
- Select the relevant product, select a variant.
- Under Inventory, click Edit locations.
- Enable all applicable locations.
- Enter stock quantities for each.
This ensures Shopify knows where stock is available and can route orders accordingly.
3. Sync the product fully in Printful
Once the product is synced to Printful:
- Confirm it is marked as Synced in your Printful Dashboard.
- This tells Shopify that stock at Printful is available.
4. Set up order routing in Shopify
Instead of manually prioritizing locations under Settings → Locations, Shopify now uses Order routing rules to determine how fulfillment locations are prioritized.
Steps to prioritize Printful as a backup:
- Go to Shopify Admin → Settings → Shipping and delivery.
- Scroll down to the Order routing and click Add rule.
- Under routing rules, select Use ranked locations.
- In the ranked locations list, place your primary fulfillment source at the top and Printful below it.
- Save your settings.
With this setup, Shopify will:
- First attempt fulfillment at your primary location.
- If no stock is available, automatically route the order to Printful.
How this works in practice:
| Action | Purpose |
| Stock in all locations | Ensure inventory is assigned where needed |
| Products synced to Printful | Activate Printful stock in Shopify |
| Order routing priorities set | Direct Shopify to route orders by location ranking |
| Printful as backup | Only used when other locations have no stock |
Still need help? Our Support Team is here for you—reach out anytime through our contact form or start a chat with us.