Understand which system owns orders, warehouse work, stock and returns before changing anything.
Where to start
Clients → the intended client
Which system does what?
| State | What it means | Safe next step |
|---|---|---|
| Customer order | Shopify holds the merchant's order, payment, amendments and cancellation. | Make the commercial change in Shopify, then check the refreshed warehouse work. |
| Fulfilment order | Shopify assigns items to a location. One customer order can have more than one fulfilment order. | Work only the items assigned to the mapped warehouse. |
| Warehouse work | StoreFulfil records picking, packing, receipt checks and supported shipment work. | Use Fulfil or Return and read the current eligibility checks. |
| Shipment | A fulfilment records what was shipped. Shopify acceptance is a separate result from local dispatch. | Check the original shipment's sync result before treating it as finished. |
| Return | An expected return describes what should arrive. Physical receipt and condition checks happen in the warehouse. | Record what actually arrived. A receipt is not a customer refund. |
What an API does
An API is how StoreFulfil reads and updates supported Shopify records. You do not need to write API requests to operate StoreFulfil. Permissions decide what the connection is allowed to do.
Why matching names is not enough
A SKU helps people identify an item, but the systems also use product, variant, inventory and location identifiers. Identical SKU text does not prove that two records are the same stock.