How to print shipping labels only for orders that are ready

A made-to-order shop can have dozens of unfulfilled orders and only eight that can physically leave today. Buying labels from the full unfulfilled list wastes money and buries the real queue.

Production status is not fulfillment status

Unfulfilled means Shopify (or Etsy) has not recorded a shipment. That order might still be:

• waiting for a photo
• waiting for artwork
• waiting for approval
• being produced
• being packed
• actually ready to ship

Only the last row belongs on a label run.

A workflow that respects that

1. Keep a production stage that means “this can ship.”
2. When the order reaches that stage, put a clear marker on the Shopify order. With Orderflow, saving Ready to Ship in Update Order writes a status-Ready to Ship tag (matching your status name).
3. In Shopify Orders, save a view filtered to that tag.
4. Open the view. Fulfill and buy labels there.

Shopify’s own fulfillment tools do the shipping. Orderflow does not buy or print labels.

Common mistakes

• Filtering Shopify by unfulfilled and calling that “today’s ships”
• Leaving old status tags on the order so the ready view is noisy
• Assuming a customer approving a proof updated the Shopify tag by itself

Using Orderflow

Orderflow holds the production stage. Shopify holds fulfillment. The tag is the bridge after you change status in Orderflow.

Explore Orstrax Orderflow.

Related: How to create a ready-to-ship workflow in Shopify, Shopify order status vs fulfillment status.