Understanding Communication Between ShipHero and Shopify

This article covers how to configure your Shopify store settings within ShipHero. We'll explain how to manage product and order information, synchronize data, and control inventory flow between the two platforms. After connecting your store, access these settings by going to the My Account > Stores page and selecting the Settings button for your Shopify store.

This article is broken into 3 main categories:

1. Inventory & Product Management
2. Order Management
3. Data Syncing

Inventory & Product Management

These settings determine how inventory levels and product information are managed between ShipHero and Shopify.

Have ShipHero Manage my Shopify Inventory

When you enable "Have ShipHero manage my Shopify inventory," ShipHero becomes the single source of truth for your inventory. Any changes you make to an SKU's available quantity in ShipHero will automatically update on your Shopify store.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Changes to inventory levels made directly in Shopify will not update inventory in ShipHero.

• If an SKU has backorders in ShipHero, a negative inventory count will be pushed to Shopify instead of zero.
• If this setting is off, ShipHero will not push any inventory updates to your Shopify store.

Product Creation Settings

As a best practice, create all new products in Shopify and let them sync to ShipHero. ShipHero does not push new SKUs to your Shopify store. To ensure products and orders are downloaded from Shopify, the setting "Download Products and Orders that are created in Shopify" must be enabled.

NOTE: If you have products with over 100 variants, please let your implementation specialist know or reach out to support@shiphero.com for assistance. There is a backend setting needs to be enabled by our team to properly import these types of products into ShipHero.

When a new product syncs from Shopify, you'll need to configure these settings:

1. Determine Starting Inventory

When a product is imported, you have two options for setting its starting inventory value in ShipHero:

• Match what is in Shopify: This pulls the current inventory from Shopify.

  Heads-Up! You must create a location named "Unassigned" in ShipHero for this to work correctly. If the location doesn't exist, inventory will be added to the "On Hand" field but won't be assigned to a location, making it impossible to pick and pack orders.
  • For multi-warehouse accounts, all Shopify inventory for a product will be combined and synced only to the Primary warehouse.
  • This setting will not sync inventory for SKUs that already exist in ShipHero.

• Start at 0: This sets the inventory to 0 in ShipHero, regardless of the quantity in Shopify.

  Warning: If the setting "Have ShipHero manage my Shopify inventory" is enabled, this option will immediately overwrite your Shopify inventory with a value of 0.
   

2. Manage Which Warehouse SKUs are Created In

For multi-warehouse accounts, you can choose where new products are created: All Warehouses (the default) or Specific Warehouses. Using the Specific Warehouses option prevents unnecessary data from being imported.

• To select specific warehouses, choose the Specific Warehouses option from the dropdown. You can select multiple locations by holding the Ctrl or CMD key while clicking.

Product Behavior & Syncing

How ShipHero Handles Duplicate SKUs

When multiple Shopify products share the same SKU, ShipHero links them to a single warehouse product record. This creates a shared inventory pool where a sale on one Shopify listing automatically reduces the available stock for all others using that SKU, ensuring counts stay accurate and consistent.

While the system allows these duplicates, it treats them as the exact same physical item during the picking and packing process. To track different items separately, you must assign each a unique SKU in Shopify before syncing. This ensures ShipHero creates an independent inventory record for every unique product in your warehouse.

If you update the SKU on a duplicated product in Shopify, ShipHero applies the change only to that duplicate. If the new SKU does not already exist in ShipHero, a new product will be created. The original product remains unaffected.

Order Management

ShipHero offers several settings to control which orders are imported from Shopify and how they're processed. Orders typically sync within a few seconds, though it can sometimes take several minutes. By default, ShipHero pulls in the last three weeks of orders upon connection.

Order Behavior & Syncing

Here's how common order adjustments affect an order on the other platform. Most processing errors happen when a user edits an order that's already being processed. To avoid issues, always confirm an order isn't being processed by your warehouse team before making any changes.

Preventing Orders from Importing

ShipHero's native integration pulls all orders as they're placed. If you want to prevent all or a set of old orders from importing, use the "Do not import orders before this order id" setting.

• To prevent all orders from importing: Set the Order ID field to a very high number like 999999999999999 and hit Save. This is useful if you want to set up your inventory in ShipHero before you start processing orders.
• To prevent old orders from importing: Find the Shopify Order ID for the oldest order you want to import. Paste that ID into the field and save.

General Order Settings

Below are the order settings available to notify your customers or add a little something extra for new customers. 

• Notify customers via email: Enables ShipHero to send a webhook to Shopify upon order completion, which triggers Shopify to email your customers with the tracking information for their order. ShipHero itself does not send these notifications.
• If an order is canceled or refunded in ShipHero, have Shopify send an email: Triggers a customer email from Shopify when an order is canceled or refunded in ShipHero. Note: (If the automation rule "Cancel in ShipHero but not in Store platform" is used the email will not be triggered to your customer.)
• Free SKU For First-Time Customers: Automatically adds a free product (with a specified SKU that must exist in ShipHero) to a new customer's order.

Order Allocation Settings

For multi-warehouse accounts, these settings determine which warehouse an order will ship from. You can either select a single warehouse or choose "Let ShipHero decide."

Best Practice: We recommend using Multi Warehouse Allocation (MWA) Rules instead of this legacy setting. If MWA is enabled, these settings will be ignored.

Data Syncing

These settings offer fine-grained control over how product and order data syncs between your Shopify store and ShipHero. To manage these settings, go to My Account Stores and select the Settings button.

Data Syncing: Shopify to ShipHero

These settings control what updates will be pushed from your Shopify store to ShipHero when they are enabled.

Data Syncing: ShipHero to Shopify

These settings control what updates will be pushed from ShipHero to your Shopify store when they are enabled.