Shopify and Order Desk Integration with Gooten

If you're selling your products through multiple sales channels, such as Shopify, Etsy, Amazon, or similar platforms, consider using a centralized order management solution like Order Desk.

Order Desk is a powerful order management app that automates order fulfillment, removing roadblocks and streamlining order movement across channels.

Order Desk is a customizable app that lets you create a unique workflow tailored to your stores, orders, fulfillment services, preferred shipping methods, and other needs. Because of this, no two Order Desk accounts are alike, and each one will have a variety of uniquely designed settings.

Because Order Desk is customizable, setting up an account can be a little overwhelming and confusing at first. With that in mind, we have created detailed instructions for integrating Gooten with Order Desk, which you can find in this article.

I'd like to check out how to integrate your Shopify store in more detail here.

• How to connect Shopify with Order Desk
• Creating Products
• Order Fulfillment Automation
• Setting up shipping methods

To connect to your Shopify store from Order Desk, click on Manage Integrations in the left navigation. Under the Shopping Carts tab, enable the Shopify integration.

Click the Connect to Shopify button, and afterward you'll be redirected to the Order Desk app store listing in Shopify, where you can install the Order Desk app. Make sure to follow all the steps for the integration.

Once you install the Order Desk app in Shopify, you can go back to Order Desk to set your preferences in the Shopify integration section.

If Instant Download is enabled, your orders will be added to Order Desk as they are placed. If this setting is disabled, your orders will not import instantly, but can still be brought in on a regular appointment using the Backup Check Schedule.

The Backup Check Schedule will instruct Order Desk to check for orders at a scheduled time. The options are the following:

• Never, Every Day (once every 24 hours), Every Twelve Hours, Every Six Hours, Every Two Hours, Every Hour.

When this backup check runs, it will look for any orders missed and pull them in. This is also useful for stores that need to turn off instant download but still regularly pull in their Shopify orders.

With Order Import Delay, you can choose a timeframe from when an order is received to when it gets downloaded into Order Desk. When an order is created and ready to be imported, it will not download into Order Desk until the set time has expired. This allows you to make any necessary changes to an order before it's imported. Backup Check Schedule should also be enabled when using this setting.

• Download These Orders

You can choose which Shopify orders you want Order Desk to download based on their status. You can either download Open, Closed, Canceled, or All orders. The fulfillment and financial status settings will also be applied, so that all three criteria must be met for an order to be downloaded.

If you choose to download Closed, Canceled, or All orders, please don't submit them for fulfillment to any of your other integrations, send them to any vendors, or export templates unless you specifically intend to.

• Fulfillment status

Choose which Shopify orders you want Order Desk to download based on their fulfillment status. You can choose to download Unshipped Orders, Unshipped and Partially Shipped Orders, Shipped Orders Only, Partially Shipped Orders Only, or Shipped and Unshipped Orders (All).

The order status and financial status settings will also be applied, so that all three criteria must be met for an order to download.

• Financial Status

Choose which Shopify orders you want Order Desk to download based on their Financial status. You can choose to download Any Status, Pending, Authorized, Partially Paid, Paid, Partially Refunded, Refunded, or Voided.

The order status and fulfillment status settings will also be applied, so that all three criteria must be met for an order to download.

Once orders are imported from Shopify, you can choose the folder where you want your newly downloaded orders placed. If you would like to work with your own custom folders, please read this guide.

• Sync Tracking Numbers

If you want Order Desk to notify Shopify when orders are fulfilled, enable the Sync Tracking Numbers setting. If tracking details are added to the order, it will be passed back to Shopify immediately, and the order will be marked as fulfilled in Shopify.

IMPORTANT NOTE

You can also enable the Email Shopify Customer setting if you would like Order Desk to notify Shopify to email your customers when fulfillment information is returned. If disabled, Shopify will not email your customers as orders are fulfilled.

Shopify integration with Order Desk allows you to further customize settings, from syncing inventory from Order Desk to Shopify to setting order number prefix or suffix, to downloading order risk info, and all the way to importing orders from Order Desk to Shopify. For more details on additional setting options, please check this article.

You can set up the Shopify order fulfillment through Order Desk in two ways:

1. Using products you already have in Gooten
2. Adding products to Order Desk

1. Using products you already have in Gooten

If you choose the first option, you will not have to create the Inventory Items in Order Desk. In that case, you would need to have all the products created in Gooten > Product Hub > Storage.

If you already have products created in Gooten, all you need to do is make sure the SKUs on your items in Shopify match exactly the SKUs for the products you have saved in Gooten. That means that each variant SKU name in Shopify needs to match the corresponding variant SKU name in Gooten > Product Hub > Storage.

The order from Shopify would come into Order Desk with the SKUs, which the Order Desk would, in turn, send to Gooten. If the SKU names match, our system will identify the Gooten products ordered and fulfill them. This option also saves you the trouble of hosting your image files and keeping them publicly available, as required for the second option: creating items in Order Desk inventory.

2. Adding products to Order Desk

If you don't have any products set up in Gooten or cannot set up a connection like explained in the first case, the best option is to set up Inventory Items in Order Desk without creating any products in Gooten.

This would also be the most suitable option for large stores with hundreds or thousands of products and a need for quick, efficient product migration.

Shopify to Order Desk Bulk Product Migration

If you don't already have your products set up in Gooten and want to set them up in Order Desk instead, an import spreadsheet is the way to go.

To import data into Order Desk, you will need a .csv, .xlsx, or .txt file containing your data. You won't be able to import that data directly into Order Desk. However, since each file will be unique per store, fulfillment service, personal preference, etc., you'll first need to create a template that matches the information in your specific file so it can be translated into Order Desk's field names.

This Order Desk article explains how to set up an import template.

Next, create a spreadsheet with your item details. This spreadsheet should include all the print details Gooten needs to fulfill the orders. So the spreadsheet should have a column for the following details:

• Item Name: This should be the Item Name in Order Desk and should be unique for each item/variation you want to import to Order Desk.
• Item Code/SKU: This should be the SKU that you have set up in your Shopify store. Order Desk can identify items in your orders by SKU.
• print_sku: This is the product code (Gooten SKU) we use to identify which item is in the order. We'll provide these to you for your items, or you can fetch them from the Product Hub during product creation.
• print_url: This is the link to the design you want printed on your items. The Order Desk will pass this link over to Gooten so that our system can retrieve the design and print it. If your item has multiple images, you can use print_url_1, print_url_2, and so on up to print_url_15 to pass numerous links.
• print_preview: This is a link to the preview image for each item - *optional
• print_location: This is in case you have items with multiple images. If you do, you can specify where each image should be printed.
• location: Set this to Gooten so you can later create an Order Desk rule for all items with Location set to Gooten to send them to our fulfillment system automatically.
• Stock: This column will define stock levels for each inventory item you import into Order Desk.

The spreadsheet should have a column for the above details at a minimum. However, you can include columns for additional information, such as Price, Description, or similar fields.

The Order Desk doesn't limit the number of variations an item can have. However, you can handle this by treating each variation as a unique item. So each variation should have its own unique SKU. That's what you'll use to know exactly which item is in an order.

In this case, we wouldn't have variants nested under a single parent product. Instead, each variant would be treated as a standalone product in the Order Desk system.

With that in mind, the Item Name will define the item name in Order Desk, and Item Code/SKU refers to the SKU of the variation. Each Shopify variation should be assigned its own unique SKU, and those SKUs should then be included in the spreadsheet.

The print_sku value will map the corresponding Gooten SKU to your Shopify SKU/variant. All the print_url files should be publicly available. They shouldn't require any login credentials to access our system and the design files so that they can print them easily.

You can specify the Location for each inventory item by adding a column named Location to the spreadsheet. The value in this column should be "Gooten." When the spreadsheet is imported, all items with this value will be assigned to the "Gooten" location. You can then have a rule that says, "When an order is imported, split all the Gooten items out of the order and automatically send them to Gooten for fulfillment."

Once you have prepared the spreadsheet, you can create an import template to import it. The first step is to upload a sample CSV file to match the item values with the columns in your CSV.

Once you set up the template, you are ready to upload the CSV you prepared for import. All the products would then be stored in Order Desk so that when an order is imported from Shopify, the Order Desk would be able to identify the items in the order using the SKU and automatically sync in all the print details that Gooten will need to fulfill the order, such as the link to the print file. Once those details are synced, the Order Desk will send the order to Gooten for fulfillment.

You can find an approved example of a CSV import file here:

• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vPuzsYFcSPBnOX-0rBOjhXGK1ouaLadjOZUp2CHDJUE/edit?usp=sharing
• Note: We intentionally skipped the print_preview and print_location columns because they're not required for product fulfillment, since the SKU we chose has only one print location (Center Front).

You can check a video tutorial on creating an Import Template for your products/inventory items HERE.

Setting up direct image file URLs

To format the shareable image file links in Dropbox, follow the steps below. Please note that you'll need Dropbox direct links or any other image hosting service (S3/any publicly accessible URL that goes directly to the image file) - the links need to stay "live" forever.

Creating direct links:

1. Navigate to the image file in your Dropbox storage
2. Click on the "Share" button next to it
3. Create a sharing link
4. Copy the link you created and paste it into a place you can easily edit.
5. Replace the string "www.dropbox.com" with "dl.dropboxusercontent.com" and delete everything after .JPG or .PNG, and you'll have a direct download link.

You can copy multiple sharing links directly into the CSV and delete the string "?dl=0" after the .JPG or .PNG using the "find and replace" feature (find "?dl=0 ", replace with blank).

You can use the same function to bulk replace the string "www.dropbox.com" with "dl.dropboxusercontent.com" in the entire CSV.

Order Fulfillment Automation

If you chose the first option and decided to create your products in Gooten, you can automate the order fulfillment by creating an Order Rule in Order Desk. Also, the order rule wouldn't need to be too complicated. It would just be a rule that says, "When the order is imported into Order Desk, send it to Gooten.":

• Rule Type: Order Rule
• Event: Order is Imported

• Action: Submit order to Gooten

However, if you choose to add your products to Order Desk instead of Gooten to automate the entire order submission process, you need to set up a Rule in Order Desk that automatically submits all Shopify orders that arrive in Order Desk to Gooten for fulfillment.

The Order Rule would be set up as follows:

• Rule Type: Order Rule
• Event: Order is Imported

• Filter: Item Metadata inventory_location Equals Gooten
• Action: Submit Order to Gooten

This rule states that when an order is imported, if the items are set to "Gooten," the order should be submitted to Gooten immediately.

Another option with Order Desk is to automate order cancellation. You can opt to cancel the order at the order details page manually:

Or you can set a rule that will automatically cancel the order at Gooten whenever it is canceled in Shopify:

• Rule Type: Order Rule
• Rule Event: Order Canceled at Shopify

• Rule Action: Cancel Order at Gooten

Order Desk relies on Shopify webhooks when receiving the cancellation notification, so this process may not be instant in some cases. However, in the majority of our test cases, the order in the Gooten system was canceled almost immediately.

For the last part, Order Desk supports the following shipping method names from Gooten:

• Standard
• Expedited
• Overnight
• Worldwide Overnight.

The problem is that the shipping methods included with your Shopify orders do not match those available at Gooten; therefore, all orders will be imported to Gooten with the Standard shipping method.

However, two settings help ensure that Order Desk can send the correct shipping method names to Gooten. The first is the "Default Mail Class," and the second is the "Shipping Class Match."

When placing an order in Shopify, if your customer selects an Expedited shipping method, the shipping method name on this order will appear in Order Desk as Expedited - 3 business days. However, Gooten doesn't have that shipping method name as the method is named "Expedited" in our system.

Order Desk doesn't know what shipping method to use for Gooten. In most cases, it resorts to the Default Mail Class setting in the Gooten integration. You can see this setting by clicking Gooten under the "Integrations" menu in the left-hand sidebar in Order Desk:

In the example above, the setting is set to Standard, which tells Order Desk: "if an order has a shipping method name that doesn't match any of the shipping method names that Gooten uses, then use Standard as the shipping method for that order."

To prevent this, use the second shipping setting, Shipping Class Match. It's used to translate the shipping method names from the shopping cart (from your Shopify store) to the shipping method names used by Gooten. You can use this setting to say, "when an order has Expedited - 3 business days as the shipping method name, tell Gooten to ship the order using Expedited."

You can add a Shipping Class Match to the Gooten integration so that Order Desk always knows which shipping methods to use based on the shipping method names received from Shopify. Those settings would look as shown in the screenshot below:

You can check a video tutorial on how to match Shipping Classes HERE.

However, if you can manage to set up the shipping rates in Shopify so the shipping method names in your shopping cart match the shipping method names in Gooten (Standard, Expedited, and Overnight), there's no need to match the shipping classes in Order Desk as all orders that come in from Shopify will be imported into Gooten with the correct shipping method names.

Once the order status is changed to Shipped in the Gooten admin, that action will trigger a webhook to update the corresponding order in Order Desk with a tracking number. Since the Order Desk and Shopify integration is already automated (Order Desk > Shopify > Email Shopify Customer > Enabled), that action will push the tracking link from Order Desk and update the corresponding order in your Shopify store. The shipping notification email to your customer will also be automatically sent.