ShipBob

ShipBob 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; ShipBob bills its own fulfillment. It speaks English, Spanish and French, following your browser’s language.

The app sends your orders to your ShipBob account, where ShipBob’s warehouse picks, packs and ships them from the stock you keep there. When ShipBob ships an order, the app marks it fulfilled here with the carrier and tracking number, and then shows where the parcel is until it is delivered.

Connect

1. Press Connect to ShipBob. Your switches on the card are saved first, then ShipBob’s own sign-in opens in a new tab.
2. Sign in to ShipBob and allow Storeloom to send orders and read their shipments. The connection is named after your store in ShipBob.
3. That tab comes back to the app, which says ShipBob is connected and which ShipBob channel your orders go to. You can close it; the app in your admin shows the connection once you open it again.

The app never sees your ShipBob password. What ShipBob gives it is kept encrypted and renewed on its own. If ShipBob stops accepting it, What else went wrong says so and the card shows Not connected to ShipBob yet: press Connect to ShipBob again. Connect again also connects another ShipBob account.

Sending orders

• On, and Send each new order to ShipBob automatically: each new order, test orders aside, goes to ShipBob as soon as it is placed, with its number, customer, address and items. In US dollars, the item prices and the order total go too; ShipBob takes amounts in dollars only, so for another currency it uses the values of your products in ShipBob.
• Each item’s SKU must be the SKU of an active product in ShipBob. The app looks every SKU up in ShipBob first: an order with an SKU ShipBob does not know, or an item without an SKU, is not sent, and the reason names it. Add the product in ShipBob or correct the SKU here, then press Send again.
• The order’s shipping option goes as its name, such as “Standard delivery”. In ShipBob, map each name to one of your ship options; a name ShipBob has not seen starts as its Standard.
• An order that is not paid yet, such as a bank transfer or an online payment the customer has not finished, waits as Waiting for payment and goes to ShipBob once it is paid. One cancelled or refunded before that is never sent. 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.
• Only your own items go to ShipBob. Items a fulfilment service such as Printful or Printify makes and ships stay with that service, so nothing ships twice; an order with none of your own items is not sent at all.
• An order cancelled while it is being sent is cancelled at ShipBob as soon as ShipBob has it.
• An order is never sent to ShipBob twice: each carries its own reference (storeloom- and the order’s id), and ShipBob refuses a second order with it.

Not sent, with the reason shown: orders paid on delivery, orders to a courier office, locker or service point, and orders whose address has no name, street, city or country. Orders picked up are not sent. Ship these yourself.

If ShipBob is busy or cannot be reached, the app tries the order again on its own within ten minutes, a few times. It first asks ShipBob whether the order arrived anyway, so a lost answer never makes a second order.

Stock

The app does not bring stock levels from ShipBob into your store yet. Keep your stock here in step with ShipBob’s yourself, so the store does not sell what ShipBob’s warehouse no longer has.

Cancelled orders

When you cancel an order here, the app cancels it at ShipBob too, and an order waiting for payment is simply not sent. ShipBob cancels an order only until its warehouse has picked it: after that ShipBob ships it, and What else went wrong tells you to check it in ShipBob. An order cancelled in ShipBob shows as Cancelled here, and What else went wrong says ShipBob does not ship it.

Auto-fulfill and tracking

The app checks ShipBob every ten minutes; Check shipments now checks at once. When your app’s address can be reached by ShipBob, ShipBob also tells the app when an order ships or its parcel moves, and the app checks then.

Auto-fulfill is on unless you turn it off. When ShipBob ships an order, the order is marked fulfilled here with the carrier and tracking number, and the customer is emailed both, with the tracking page when there is one. If ShipBob splits an order into several shipments, the first one fulfills the order here; the others are in ShipBob.

The app then tells your store where the parcel is (see Orders): waiting for the carrier, in transit, out for delivery, delivered, or failed when ShipBob reports a delivery exception (a later status replaces it). It follows each parcel until it is delivered, for 60 days at most.

Turn Auto-fulfill off to fulfill orders yourself: the app still shows each order’s carrier, tracking number and where the parcel is on its own page, but leaves the order unfulfilled. Orders shipped while it was off stay yours to fulfill when you turn it back on.

Orders sent

Orders sent lists each order with its state: Waiting for payment, Sending, With ShipBob (with what ShipBob says of it, such as an order on hold and why), Not sent (with the reason), Shipped (with the carrier’s service) or Cancelled, its carrier, its tracking number (a link to the tracking page when there is one), where the parcel is, and whether the app fulfilled it.

Send again, under an order that was not sent, reads the order from your store again and sends it: fix what the reason says first. Send an order by hand takes an order number, like #1001: use it for an order placed while sending automatically was off, or one waiting for a payment you received outside the store. For an order not paid yet, such as a Pay later order you made, the page says so and sends nothing until you tick Also when the order is not paid yet and press again.

What else went wrong

What else went wrong lists what is not about sending an order: an order ShipBob could not cancel, one cancelled in ShipBob, one that had nothing left to fulfill here (fulfilled by hand meanwhile), one ShipBob no longer finds, ShipBob no longer accepting the app’s access, or ShipBob not taking the app’s shipping notice (the app then still checks every ten minutes).

Remove the app

Remove in Apps stops it at once: new orders are no longer sent to ShipBob. Two days later the app removes its shipping notice from ShipBob and deletes everything it kept for your store. Orders already in ShipBob stay there.

What the app keeps

The app keeps your store’s address and access, the access ShipBob gave it (encrypted), the ShipBob channel your orders go to and the settings you enter, and for each order sent: the order number, ShipBob’s number for it, its state and what went wrong, and once shipped, the carrier, its service, the tracking number and link, and where the parcel is. It keeps no customer names, addresses or phone numbers: it reads them from your store when it sends an order and sends them to ShipBob. The App Shop links to the app’s privacy page, which says the same.