Third-party marketplace order and fulfillment workflow recommendations

Orders aren't created with an automatically-captured transaction. Merchants have to complete fulfillment on an order before the transaction is captured automatically and the order is marked as paid. Transaction capture is initiated by the third-party marketplace.

Orders can't be fulfilled immediately. They must be held until a period between 30 minutes and 24 hours has passed before they can be fulfilled. This is to account for customer cancellation, payment authorization, and fraud and risk analysis.

The differences between the workflow for orders from marketplaces and for orders from other channels

The workflow for non-marketplace orders	The workflow for marketplace orders

From the time that payment is authorized until it is captured, merchants can't perform the following actions on an order:

• Change the destination address

• Edit the order

• Issue refunds for custom amounts

• Capture the payment manually

Use the following information from the order response to identify an order processed with Shopify Payments.

For Facebook, review the differences in the order response values for orders processed using Facebook Payments and Shopify Payments.

Reference

Reference

Review the following recommendations for tracking and fulfilling orders placed through third-party marketplaces using Shopify APIs.

Use the fulfillment order API to perform fulfillment-related work.

You should use the GraphQL FulfillmentOrder object or the REST FulfillmentOrder resource instead of using the Fulfillment and Order resource separately. FulfillmentOrder gives you more control over how you manage fulfillments. Learn how to migrate to the FulfillmentOrder resource.

Use the fulfillment order status and order financial status to determine if an order should be fulfilled.

You can use the fulfillment order status on the GraphQL or REST FulfillmentOrder resource to determine if an order can be fulfilled. A fulfillment order is ready for fulfillment when its status is set to open. Also each FulfillmentOrder object includes a list of supported fulfillment order actions to determine which actions it can take. Learn how to manage orders by using fulfillment order actions.

Sales channel apps for third-party marketplaces require that an order is fulfilled before payments are automatically captured by the marketplace. To prevent expiration of authorized payment, a post-order workflow shouldn't use payment captured as the condition for fulfillment. Instead, determine if an order has payment authorization (status: authorized) and fulfillment order open (status: open) before fulfillment. To do this, you can use the financial_status of the REST Order resource, or the displayFinancialStatus of the GraphQL Order resource.

• Reference - Order
• Reference - FulfillmentOrder

• Reference - Order
• Reference - FulfillmentOrder

• orders/updated

• fulfillment_orders/ready_to_fulfill (unstable)

• You can't use line_items#fulfillable_quantity to determine if an order is fulfillable if the fulfillment order is on hold. The value 0 is returned.

• Check the on hold status before you create a fulfillment following an order/create webhook. If you don't, then the API request fails.

• Avoid using a predetermined value for the on-hold time period. This value differs across marketplaces.

• Avoid using gateway to determine if an order is created through a channel. For example, following a migration, the gateway value of an order created on the Facebook sales channel app will change from instagram/facebook to shopify_payments. Instead, use source_name to determine the source of an order.

Because orders placed through third-party marketplaces use Shopify Payments instead of a unique payment gateway, the gateway value doesn't reflect the channel in which the order is created. Fields such as reference and source_identifier aren't guaranteed across different apps.

Orders created using the API can be assigned any of the source_name values listed in the Partner Dashboard. Use the source_name of an order to determine its channel source. The source_name property can be set only during order creation. It's not writeable afterwards.

Alternatively, orders can be assigned a custom string or left unspecified:

• If source_name is a custom string, then the order is unattributed.

• If source_name is unspecified, then new orders are assigned the value of your app's ID.

The following are Admin API resources for determining the source channel for an order:

• If you're using the REST Admin API, then use the Order or Checkout resources.

• If you're using the GraphQL Admin API, then use the DraftOrderInput mutation.

Avoid workflows that depend on the orders/create, order_transactions/create or order/paid webhook events to initiate fulfillments. Instead, use the orders/updated or the fulfillment_orders/ready_to_fulfill events (available in the unstable version of the API) and FulfillmentOrder response body to determine if a fulfillment order is ready for fulfillment.

During the transition, apps need to support both the Facebook Payments and Shopify Payments workflows.

For the transition period, we recommend determining the post-order workflow based on the gateway. Orders created through a sales channel app on a Shopify Payments-enabled store will see transactions created in an authorized state. Orders have to complete fulfillment before payment is captured automatically by the marketplace. During the transition period, create a condition check on the payment gateways value to determine the post-order workflow.