Printful

Printful is an app. Install it from Apps, then open it with Open app: it opens inside your admin, signed in to your store as you. The app is free; Printful bills its own printing and shipping. It speaks English, Spanish and French, following your browser’s language.

Printful prints a product when it is ordered and ships it to your customer. The app makes Printful your store’s fulfillment service for the products you choose: when an order with them is paid, their part of the order goes to your Printful account, and you ship the rest of the order as usual. When Printful ships a parcel, the app marks its items fulfilled here with the carrier and tracking number.

Connect

1. In Printful’s Developer Portal, open Your tokens and make a private token for your Printful store, with access to orders, products and webhooks. Copy it: Printful shows it once.
2. In the app, check On, paste the token into Printful private token and press Save.
3. The app asks Printful which store the token reaches and reads that store’s products. It says Printful answered: the token works for the store …, with … products with SKUs, and the card shows Connected to the Printful store.

A token made for your whole Printful account reaches every store in it: the app then says so and lists them, and you enter the one to use in Printful store ID. A token Printful refuses is not kept, and the reason is shown.

The token is kept encrypted and never shown again; leave the field empty to keep it. Test connection asks Printful again and reads your Printful products again, for instance after you added some there.

Choose the products Printful makes

1. Open Settings › Fulfillment. Printful is there, Connected by the app Printful.
2. Press Choose products and pick the products Printful prints for you. Only these go to Printful; everything else stays yours to ship, also in the same order.
3. Give each of their variants here the SKU it has in Printful (its product’s variant SKU, or its External ID). The app finds the Printful product by its SKU.

Printful makes each item when it is ordered: do not track stock for these products here.

Import your Printful products

Import products from Printful, under Products from Printful, adds the products of your Printful store here, so you do not make them by hand:

• each one as a draft, with its name, the description of the product Printful prints on, its variants with their SKUs and retail prices, and its pictures (the product’s and each variant’s mockup, up to ten);
• its variants named by colour and size when those tell them apart, else by their names in Printful;
• made to order, so their stock is not counted;
• shipped by Printful: they are already chosen for Printful in Settings › Fulfillment.

Check them in Products, then make them active. The import runs on its own: open the app again to see Last import, with how many were added, updated, kept as your own and not imported. What else went wrong says why one was not imported: no variant Printful can make with a SKU, a variant without a retail price in Printful, a price in another currency than your store’s, or a SKU another Printful product has too.

Importing again updates the products it added, found by their SKUs: their name, description, variants and prices. A variant with a new SKU is added and one Printful no longer has is removed; their pictures, status, stock settings and where they ship from stay as you left them. A Printful product whose SKU is already one of your own products is not imported: it stays yours, and its orders still reach Printful by its SKU.

Prices are taken only in your store’s currency: if your Printful store’s retail prices are in another one, set them in your store’s currency in Printful first.

Installed Printful before it could import? The import needs the access Add products to your store, and change the ones it added. Open Apps, then Printful: it says the app now asks for more access. Press Install again to grant it, then import. Until then, the app says so when you press the button.

Sending orders

• A paid order’s Printful part goes to Printful at once (a test order’s never does), with the customer, address and items, each with its name and price for the packing slip. On the order’s page it shows as Accepted by Printful.
• Confirm orders automatically is off unless you turn it on. Off, each order waits in Printful as a draft until you confirm it there (Printful charges you then); the app’s page shows Draft: confirm it in Printful. On, Printful charges you and starts making the order at once.
• An order that is not paid yet, such as a bank transfer, is sent once it is paid. Send now, not paid yet, beside an order waiting for payment, sends it on purpose before it is paid. An order a company buys on payment terms (pay in 30 days and the like) is unpaid by agreement and does not wait: it is sent at once.
• An order is never sent to Printful twice: each carries its own reference (storeloom- and the start of the order’s id), and the app looks for it in Printful before it sends it again.
• If Printful is busy, cannot be reached or does not accept the token, the app tries again on its own within ten minutes, five times at most.

Not sent, with the reason shown on the order’s page (Rejected by Printful) and in the app: orders paid on delivery, orders picked up, orders to a courier office, locker or service point, addresses without a name, street, city or country (or a state in the United States, Canada and Australia), an item without a SKU, a SKU Printful does not have, cannot make (ignored, discontinued or without its print files) or has twice, items added to an order Printful already has, and anything Printful itself refuses, in its words. Ship these yourself, or fix the reason and press Send to Printful again on the order’s page.

If the app is off, Storeloom’s requests wait until you turn it on.

Cancelled orders

When you cancel an order here, the app cancels it in Printful too while Printful allows it: while it is a draft or waiting to be made. Once Printful is making it, Printful does not cancel it: the order’s page says Printful could not cancel, What else went wrong gives Printful’s words, and the parcel is still fulfilled here when Printful ships it. An order cancelled in Printful is said in What else went wrong: cancel it here or ship it yourself.

Shipments and tracking

The app checks Printful every ten minutes; Check shipments now checks at once. When your app’s address can be reached by Printful, Printful also tells the app when a parcel ships, and the app checks then. Printful keeps one notice address per store: if yours already sends Printful’s notices somewhere else, the app leaves it and says so, and still checks every ten minutes.

Each parcel Printful ships is fulfilled here with the items it carries, the carrier and the tracking number, and the customer is emailed them with the tracking page. When Printful splits an order into several parcels, each one is fulfilled with its own items; a parcel Printful sends again (a reshipment) adds nothing here. The app does not follow the parcel after that: the carrier’s tracking page does.

Orders sent

Orders sent lists each order with its state: Waiting for payment, Sending, With Printful (with Printful’s status, such as a draft to confirm), Partly shipped, Not sent (with the reason), Shipped or Cancelled, its carrier, its tracking number (a link to the tracking page when there is one), and whether the app fulfilled it.

What else went wrong

What else went wrong lists what is not about sending an order: an order Printful could not cancel, one cancelled in Printful, one that had nothing left to fulfill here (fulfilled by hand meanwhile), Printful’s notices going to another address, or Storeloom no longer accepting the app as your fulfillment service. That happens when you press New token and secret for Printful in Settings › Fulfillment: press Save in the app to connect it again.

Remove the app

Remove in Apps stops it at once: Printful is no longer your fulfillment service, and new orders are yours to ship. Two days later the app removes its notice address from Printful and deletes everything it kept for your store. Orders already in Printful stay there.

What the app keeps

The app keeps your store’s address and access, your Printful token (encrypted), the Printful store it reaches and the settings you enter, its access as your fulfillment service (encrypted), the number, SKU and name of each of your Printful products' variants, which of your products it added from which Printful product with their SKUs, how the last import went, and for each order sent: the order number, Printful’s number for it and its status there, its state and what went wrong, and for each parcel, the carrier, its service, the tracking number and link. It keeps no customer names, addresses or phone numbers: it reads them from your store when it sends an order and sends them to Printful. The App Shop links to the app’s privacy page, which says the same.