How do you get tracking and delivery events in to Shopify when it closes the order as soon as the fi

Technical Q&A

Topic summary

Problem: After sending a fulfillment event with status “in_transit,” Shopify emails the customer and immediately closes the fulfillment, blocking any subsequent tracking updates (e.g., out for delivery, delivered).

Details:

  • Attempting to send further fulfillment events fails because a fulfillment ID is required, and REST API calls to fulfilEvent return “NOT FOUND.”
  • Behavior appears region-specific: updates flow as expected in the US (delivery/out for delivery), but not in other regions.

Context:

  • “Fulfillment event” = a Shopify tracking status update submitted via API.
  • REST API is used to post these events; the caller cannot retrieve or reference the needed fulfillment ID after the first event.

Status: Unresolved. Requesting guidance on how to keep fulfillments open for subsequent events or correctly submit additional events when Shopify auto-closes after the first in_transit update.

Summarized with AI on December 30. AI used: gpt-5.
1

How do you get tracking and delivery events in to Shopify when it closes the order as soon as the first event is received?

We send in a fulfil event with a status of in_transit. Shopify notifies the customer with an in transit email and promptly closes the fulfilment, so no further updates can be issued. We can’t send in a simple fulfilEvent as this requires a fulfilment ID. Also, no attempt to call the fulfilEvent REST API returns anything but NOT FOUND.

This seems to work in the US, delivery, out for delivery updates seem to get to the customer, but not the rest of the world.

Any help would be much appreciated.