Hi All - Is there a way to update the fulfillment status once an order comes in. We have custom products and take 5-7 days to make and ship. We would like to change the status to “In Progress” or “On Hold” so the customer knows we have received the order and acknowledge that its in the work. Thanks
Topic summary
Main issue: Merchants with custom products (5–7 days lead time) want intermediate order statuses (e.g., “In Progress,” “On Hold”) so customers know work has started.
Proposed solution: Use Shopify’s Flow app to automate or manually trigger status-related actions on orders. Flow can run after a set delay (e.g., 72 hours) or be turned off and applied manually to selected orders.
Plan limitation: Flow is available only on Shopify Plan and above; the requester is on Basic, evaluating whether to upgrade versus pursuing custom development (which may increase costs). A helper offered to create and share a sample Flow if upgrading.
Contrasting experience: Another creator reports Shopify has no native multi-stage fulfillment statuses; suggested apps didn’t resolve the customer-facing limitation. In customer accounts, orders still show only “fulfilled” or “unfulfilled.”
Workaround: Change store language strings so “unfulfilled” reads “in process” and “fulfilled” reads “shipped,” though this doesn’t add more status options.
Outcome/status: No definitive native solution; decision pending on upgrading to use Flow or investing in custom development. Key question remains how to expose additional, meaningful statuses to customers beyond the default two.
Hey there @mhemani ! May I ask what Shopify plan you have currently? I did something similar with Shopify’s Flow app that let me run automated actions on orders, products, customers and much more. It is only available for stores with at least the Shopify Plan and above.
@AlonsoAguayo I am currently on the Basic Plan. Trying to see if Shopify can work for us. We are currently using another platform and works great accept a new partner only has API for Shopify so have to move over.
There are definitely multiple ways to tackle this but they might elevate your overhead costs with custom development. If you’re inclined to this solution, please feel free to reach out; nevertheless, I do consider that simply upgrading to the next tier would be more beneficial to your business as it has more than just the Flow app that can solve this particular issue. Give me a minute to create the flow and share it with you in case you decide to upgrade and use it!
Thanks for sharing. On the flow app - will it give me a choice to manually change the status or does it do it automatically? I need to manually trigger the next status as we have some internal action item that need to take place before we can confirm a product / order.
You can set it to be automatically after X amount of time, say for example, 72 hours. Just to play it safe. However, if needed, the Flow can be turned off so it won’t get triggered automatically and you can select the orders you want and manually apply it to them.
I need the same thing. I am an artist and I need to mark that people are in queue or their item is being worked on etc. I’ve contacted shopify and they escalated and they have nothing. They have suggested apps, that don’t work. If your customer goes into their account on your shop it still only shows fulfilled or unfulfilled. One thing I did for now was to go in and change the language, so now instead of unfulfilled it says “in process” and I changed filled to say “shipped.” but I need more options than that and I can’t believe Shopify doesn’t already have this. It’s so basic. And certainly for creators it’s necessary.