Why are new products missing from my General Shipping Profile?

[seejessletter]

I just added a handful of products to my shop today, and they are all missing from my General Shipping Profile. I've been troubleshooting and cannot figure out why they aren't there when Shopify says "New products are added to this profile."

Things I have already tried/checked:

• I have an integration with Printful for all my shipping; all settings on Printful's end are on
• I only have one shipping profile set up (General); so they aren't on any other shipping profile
• I have "This product requires shipping" checked on all products
• I have Printful checked as the "Inventory stocked at" selection

Please help!

[Rein]

Hi, @seejessletter 

I understand you are using Printful to manage your inventory and create products, however, when you import a product into your Shopify store it does not by default get added to your General Shipping Profile, is that correct?

While I would ideally be able to observe your shipping setup in order to gauge what might be going on specifically, I believe this may be due to Printful managing your inventory and ultimately your shipping also. It is a Print on Demand service rather than say a Dropshipping service in that regard. That being said, I do think you are right in that the items should be added to the general profile unless the app itself specifically routes it elsewhere. 

Would you be able to send me a screenshot of your shipping profiles page as well as an example of a product page (from your admin), so I can compare the two to see what should be happening? I am thinking this could be also related to the "active/draft" product status of the new products being brought into your store. 

In the first theory above when fulfilling an order, you can do so from your order page.

When you're ready for your customer fulfillment service to ship an order, mark the order as fulfilled from your Shopify admin. Can you check an example to see if this might be the case? 

Speaking of your shipping strategy, have you given much thought to your messaging around shipping times and your cost structure offering? 

You’ll want to be sure that you’re accounting for printing times when it comes to shipping. Whatever the shipping times are, be sure to add anywhere from two to four days for production, or more depending on the product.

Always be upfront about shipping times or you’ll wind up with a support inbox full of shipping questions. Outline what to expect on your FAQ page or consider creating a separate Shipping page to explain shipping to customers.

If you can, try to partially or fully absorb your shipping costs into your retail price. Year after year, studies show that surprise shipping costs added at checkout can deter customers from buying. On top of that, free shipping bolsters a number of your other marketing efforts:

• Free shipping is still a great sales sweetener, even if you can only offer it for specific regions, and provides customers with one more incentive to buy.
• Conditional free shipping (e.g., “Get free shipping when you spend $30 or more”) encourages customers to add more to their cart to reach the threshold and usually helps you achieve a better total shipping rate by shipping everything together.
• You can use free shipping to justify longer wait times. Many consumers will wait a bit longer for an order if they know it will save them money on shipping.

Please let me know if you have any questions, and please do follow up with those screenshots.