Why didn’t Printful provide a tracking number for my Shopify order?

Typically, Printful will automatically update your Shopify order tracking information once the order has been shipped, and subsequently, Shopify will send that tracking number to your customer.

If your product was published directly from Printful and no preferences were manually changed on the Shopify side, then you don’t have to worry about the tracking not being updated.

However, if the tracking number was not synced to Shopify, it most likely means that one or more of the following apply:

Product variant SKUs in Shopify and in Printful are mismatched.
“Inventory will be stocked at” is not set to Printful for each respective product variant.
You have canceled/closed your fulfillment order, or you have canceled an “In production” order on Shopify: in this case, Shopify doesn’t allow Printful to automatically send tracking information to your store. You will have to retrieve the tracking information from Printful and manually send it to your customer.

How can I check if “Inventory will be stocked at” is set to Printful?

In your Shopify dashboard, navigate to Products.
Next, click on a product of your choice and navigate to Variants.
Click on one of the variants to open its details.
Scroll down to the Inventory section and check the current settings.

Not to mistake it for the “Vendor” drop-down – the vendor you select is entirely up to you, and you’re by no means obligated to display Printful on your listing.

Now, let’s see what each of these options means for your Printful order.

“Inventory will be stocked at” set to Printful

In this case, Printful is responsible for syncing all updates regarding your Shopify customer’s order fulfillment. The tracking will be updated as expected.

“Inventory will be stocked at” set to Shopify

It means that you are responsible for controlling inventory and order fulfillment.

Printful won’t be able to update order status to “Fulfilled” and/or provide tracking in this case – once an order is fulfilled, you would have to add the tracking to your customer’s order manually.

“Inventory will be stocked at” set to any other external app

In this case, Printful is unable to update the order fulfillment status. The other fulfillment service is responsible for doing that.