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This page is going to go over how to create a shipping rule, where to find your saved shipped rules, and where to track the history of shipping rules.
If you’ve installed the ByteStand MCF Shipping app you have access to Shipping Rules. Shipping Rules give your store the power to automatically direct how orders are fulfilled—no more manually changing fulfillment locations after an order is placed. Send Shopify orders to Amazon for MCF fulfillment or…not!
Here’s a quick example. In my test store, I prefer Amazon to fulfill most of my orders. But I’ve noticed that shipping costs go up significantly when there are more items in the order. So for orders with more than six items, I want to ship them myself or through my 3PL.
With Shipping Rules, I’ve created an automatic rule that detects large orders and switches the fulfillment location—saving money and time. Amazon still takes care of the smaller orders automatically, just as I prefer.
In order to utilize the ByteStand Shipping Rules, the store must fit all requirements. You can learn more about these Requirements here or watch our YouTube Video After ensuring your store meets all of the requirements continue reading below.
If you do not have access to Shipping Rules in your ByteStand app then you are missing the first requirement which is ‘Flex.’ Please take a look at the page linked above to learn how to enable and set up Flex. Once Flex is enabled you will receive access to the Shipping Rule page on ByteStand.
On the home page of the app click on Rules. Or if you are already in the app on a different page you can use the purple menu to the right to hover over it and click on Rules.
Let’s get started by creating our first rule. Click ‘+ New Rule’ and you’ll notice two Rule Types.
The Fulfillment rule aims to change the fulfillment location of eligible orders. The Tag Rule will add a tag to the order.
The creation of both rule types is similar and every rule will need a name. In this example we will create a Fulfillment Rule and name it ‘Test 1’. The next step is deciding how complex the rule should be so let’s talk about the meaning of ‘Any’ and ‘All.’ ‘Any’ means ‘if the order matches ANY of the conditions below run the rule.’ ‘All’ means ‘the order MUST match ALL of the conditions for the rule to run. Stores have more flexibility with the ‘any’ options versus very specific needs with the ‘All’ option.
Start building your rule to the left.
The main conditions are Customer, Order, and Product. Quickly looking at each condition the Customer option allows you to create a rule based off of pre-existing customer tags found in orders or customer email addresses. Stores can use the Order condition to create rules based off of order totals, the number of line items in the order, shipping locations, and more. The Product condition helps stores create a rule based off of location specific inventory levels, product SKUs, product titles and more.
Let’s create a Rule together which will run when one of my specific products is almost out of stock in Amazon. When this happens I want the product in the order to be assigned to my physical location so I can ship the order myself. I do not want this rule to run for any other SKUs so this is a very specific rule with multiple conditions.
Notice how I’ve selected ‘All’ because I need both conditions to be met before the rule runs. The plus and minus sign will help create additional conditions or delete them. In this example, I am telling the app, if a order is created with the SKU ABC123 & that SKU has less than 6 units stocked in the ByteStand(USA) location please change the fulfillment location of the SKU in the order to my North Carolina Warehouse location.
Keeping up with me so far? Moving right along to something a little more tricky is the toggle…which is located here.
Consider this feature similar to the Any and All options above. Except this condition means AND. If this feature is triggered the order must meet all conditions created above AND include multiple fulfillment locations. This order is a great example of what multiple fulfillment locations looks like in a Shopify order.
So building onto our current rule. Let’s trigger this option which means my order must include SKU ABC123 AND the SKU must have less than 6 units available in the ByteStand(USA) location AND the order must contain multiple fulfillment locations…only then will the rule be triggered! If any of those cases are NOT true for an order then the Rule will not run.
Okay, let’s keep moving and look at the end of this process and one of the most important parts. What do we want to happen when the rule is triggered? In our example the orders fulfillment location should be changed to the North Carolina Warehouse. The selections in this dropdown box are pulled from the stores Shopify ‘Locations’ Only physical locations & ByteStand locations will appear in the drop down box. The app is not able to select other app locations.
Second to last, is requesting fulfillment. If the rule is changing the orders location to a ByteStand location you have two options. ByteStand can automatically request fulfillment of the order which means sending the fulfillment request of the order to Amazon right away.
Or the store can opt to ‘Do Not Fulfill’ and the order will sit in an Unfulfilled status in Shopify until the store manually ‘Requests Fulfillment’ of the order. If the rule is changing the orders location to a physical location the only option provided is ‘Do Not Fulfill’ as ByteStand cannot automatically fulfill orders that it is not managing. And the order will sit in an Unfulfilled status in Shopify waiting for the store to manage the order.
Last but not least, don’t forget to press Save! While you are down here, keep scrolling and take a look at the Explanation box. We’ve included definitions and verbiage for each condition! Notice as you change the conditions in your rule above that the Explanation changes below. This can be super helpful while you are getting started with this feature.
Creating your first rule may take some trial and error but reach out to us if questions arise!
Speaking of questions, where did that rule go that we just saved and how can you find the rules you’ve previously set up? Well, let’s scroll to the top if you have not already and click on Saved Rules. This is where you will find all of the rules you have previously created. You can view the details of your rules here and even Edit your Rules one at a time. You can also easily delete rules on this page.
I’d say that’s a pretty simple tool and next we should take a look at the Rules History page. Stores can find the results of Rules on this page. You can search for rules by Shopify order number or rule name and pressing Enter on your keyboard. Click on the Shopify Order # to be sent to the order in Shopify or click on the Rule Name to see the details of the Rule that ran for the order.
If a rule tries to run and fails there will be a red status that you can click on…a pop up will appear with more information explaining why the rule failed. The most common failed reason is due to the product not being stocked at the location the rule was created for.
After learning how to create Rules, look up rules, and their histrory take a look at our Video that covers the written instructions above.
If this does not answer your question please visit the Contact Us page to send Cara a message! She’ll be happy to assist.