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Apps in order routing

Order routing apps provide a way for merchants with complex or highly custom needs to take control over their fulfillment and delivery strategy needs. Order routing apps use Shopify Functions to customize fulfillment and delivery strategies.

This guide introduces functionality that you can build in your order routing app, provides common use cases for order routing apps, and offers some developer tools and resources to get you started.

Anchor to How it worksHow it works

When a customer places an order, Shopify selects the best possible location to fulfill it. You can use the following Function APIs to introduce your own custom logic into this process, and configure how Shopify selects an order's fulfillment locations and restricts which item can be fulfilled:

Anchor to Order routing location rulesOrder routing location rules

Order routing apps can provide custom rules, in addition to the default Shopify rules, for how the best possible location is selected. Merchants can then configure a complete order routing strategy by ranking rules within their store's order routing settings.

Plus

Only stores on the Shopify Plus plan can use custom order routing location rules.

Anchor to Fulfillment constraintsFulfillment constraints

Fulfillment constraints offer a way for apps to restrict which products must be fulfilled or not fulfilled together.

If there are no valid locations that meet the requirements for fulfilling the cart, then the buyer's ability to complete checkout is blocked.

Anchor to Local pickup delivery option generatorsLocal pickup delivery option generators

Local pickup delivery option generators allow apps to generate local pickup options, based on custom rules, available to buyers during checkout.

Anchor to Use casesUse cases

Common use cases for order routing apps include the following:

  • Define custom rules for assigning order routing priority to specific locations.
  • Require specified products to be fulfilled (or not fulfilled) together.
  • Prevent buyers from completing checkout when inventory allocations cannot meet fulfillment constraints.

Anchor to Developer tools and resourcesDeveloper tools and resources

Explore the following developer tools and resources to learn more about building order routing apps.

Order routing location rules

Use Shopify Functions to choose a different order location during checkout.

Fulfillment constraints

Use Shopify Functions to customize fulfillment and delivery strategies.

Anchor to Next stepsNext steps

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