Track orders placed on other platforms

Orders that are created through third-party marketplaces, like Facebook or Google, use Shopify Payments as the payment processor.

This guide describes a high-level, recommended workflow for using the GraphQL Admin API to track orders placed through third-party marketplaces.

Anchor to RequirementsRequirements

• Your app can make authenticated requests to the GraphQL Admin API.
• Your store has existing orders that are unfulfilled. If you need to make changes to an unfulfilled item, then you can edit an order.
• You're familiar with the API objects that pertain to fulfillment orders.

• You've met Shopify's protected customer data requirements.

Anchor to How it worksHow it works

Orders that are placed through third-party marketplaces and orders placed from other channels go through different workflows. The following diagram illustrates the differences between the workflows:

Anchor to Orders placed through third-party marketplacesOrders placed through third-party marketplaces

The following workflow considerations apply for orders that are placed through third-party marketplaces:

• Orders aren't created with automatically captured transactions.

  Merchants have to fulfill 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.

  From the time that a payment is authorized until it's 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

Anchor to Orders placed through other channelsOrders placed through other channels

For orders placed through other channels, transactions are automatically captured before the order is fulfilled. Merchants or third-party fulfillment services can also immediately act on orders to begin the fulfillment process.

To learn more about fulfillment workflows for orders placed through other channels, refer to the following guides:

• Manage fulfillments as an order management app
• Manage fulfillments as a fulfillment service app

Anchor to Step 1: Migrate your app to use fulfillment ordersStep 1: Migrate your app to use fulfillment orders

In Shopify, the FulfillmentOrder object models an end-to-end fulfillment process and is available in the GraphQL Admin API. The FulfillmentOrder object enables fulfillment data to sync accurately between Shopify and apps.

To learn how to migrate your app, refer to Migrate to fulfillment orders.

Anchor to Step 2: Determine the source channel of an orderStep 2: Determine the source channel of an order

You can use the DraftOrderInput input object to determine the source channel of an order.

Anchor to Identify orders processed with Shopify Payments or Facebook PaymentsIdentify orders processed with Shopify Payments or Facebook Payments

To identify an order that was processed with Shopify Payments or Facebook Payments, you can retrieve the order using the GraphQL Admin API and review the information in specific response fields.

The following table lists the response fields and values that you can review when you retrieve an order:

Anchor to ConsiderationsConsiderations

• Because orders that are 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 like reference and source_identifier aren't guaranteed across different apps.

• Orders that are created using the GraphQL Admin API can be assigned any of the source_name values that are 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.

Anchor to Step 3: Determine if the order can be fulfilledStep 3: Determine if the order can be fulfilled

You can use the order financial status and fulfillment order status to determine if an order should be fulfilled. The following table describes the fields or properties, values, and webhooks that you can use to determine if an order can be fulfilled:

Anchor to Order financial statusOrder financial status

Sales channel apps for third-party marketplaces require that an order is fulfilled before payments are automatically captured by the marketplace.

To prevent the expiration of authorized payments, 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 an open fulfillment order ("status": "open") before fulfillment. You can do this by reviewing the following information the displayFinancialStatus field in the GraphQL Admin API Order object.

Anchor to Fulfillment order statusFulfillment order status

A fulfillment order is ready for fulfillment when its status is open. For more information about how a fulfillment order transitions to different statuses, refer to Statuses.

Each fulfillment order includes a list of supported fulfillment order actions to determine which actions it can take. For more information about fulfillment order actions, refer to determine which actions to take.

Anchor to ConsiderationsConsiderations

• 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 status of the fulfillment order before you create a fulfillment following an order/create webhook. If the status is on_hold, then the API request to create a fulfillment fails.

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

• Avoid using the gateway field or property to determine if an order is created through a channel.

  For example, after migrating your app, the gateway value of an order created on the Facebook sales channel app changes from instagram/facebook to shopify_payments. Instead, use source_name to determine the source of an order.

Anchor to Best practicesBest practices

The following section provides some best practices for tracking orders that are placed through third-party marketplaces.

Anchor to Don't rely on order creation events to initiate fulfillmentsDon't rely on order creation events to initiate fulfillments

Avoid workflows that depend on the orders/create, order_transactions/create or order/paid webhook events to initiate fulfillments.

Instead, use the fulfillment_orders/ready_to_fulfill webhook (available only in the unstable version of the API) and the FulfillmentOrder response body to determine if a fulfillment order is ready for fulfillment.

Anchor to Support Facebook Payments and Shopify Payments workflowsSupport Facebook Payments and Shopify Payments workflows

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 that are 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.

Anchor to Next stepsNext steps

• Learn how to manage fulfillments as an order management app.
• Learn how to manage fulfillments as a fulfillment service app.
• Edit existing orders using the GraphQL Admin API.