Etsy and Shopify order workflow for custom product businesses

You do not have to run a completely separate operation for every sales channel. For a custom shop, the useful split is: sell wherever the customer already is, then make and ship from one working copy of the order.

This is an architecture, not a guarantee that every marketplace behaves the same.

Sell

Etsy and your Shopify store can both take the order. Amazon, Walmart, and eBay can too, when a connector puts those sales into Shopify. Each channel keeps its own listing rules and fees.

Centralize

Shopify Orders is the operational list, but only for orders that exist there. Website checkouts appear on their own. Etsy orders appear only after a compatible connector imports them.

Shopify Marketplace Connect can bring some marketplace orders into Shopify. New Etsy connections are not currently supported through Marketplace Connect. Use a compatible connector for a new Etsy shop. Several Shopify apps can sync Etsy orders into Shopify.

Organize

Once the row is a Shopify order, production stages belong on that order: received, waiting on the customer, proof, in production, ready to ship. That is the job of a workflow layer such as Orderflow—not of Etsy, and not of fulfillment status alone.

Produce

Custom work happens here: photos, art, approval, making. Personalized Etsy order management, proofs, and photo collection are the usual missing pieces.

Ship

Fulfill in Shopify when the object is ready. A ready-to-ship view beats hunting every unfulfilled order.

Sync

The marketplace connector updates the originating marketplace where it supports fulfillment and tracking. Orderflow does not perform that sync.

Using Orderflow

Orderflow is the organize/produce layer after compatible orders are already in Shopify. It is marketplace-connector agnostic. It does not import Etsy and does not print labels.

Explore Orstrax Orderflow.

Related: How to manage Etsy orders in Shopify, How to manage Etsy and Shopify orders in one place.