I'm a 3PL trying to help some customers, automation!

Technical Q&A

Topic summary

A 3PL provider is seeking automation solutions for smaller Shopify customers who lack IT staff. The core challenge involves two workflows:

Current Manual Process:

  • Customers manually upload order files to SFTP using tools like FileZilla
  • The 3PL returns fulfillment data via CSV files to an outgoing SFTP location
  • Customers struggle to automate these bidirectional file transfers

Recommended Solutions:

  • Mechanic.dev: Suggested as primary option with existing SFTP task templates
  • CSV/Export Apps: EZ Exporter, Matrixify, Ordersify, Data Export IO, and Reports Pundit mentioned for scheduled exports
  • Fulfillment Updates: EZ Fulfill can pull tracking numbers from SFTP and update Shopify orders

Key Requirements:

  • Automated scheduling (15-minute intervals acceptable)
  • Proper order filtering to avoid duplicate sends
  • Correct CSV formatting for 3PL systems
  • Solution must work for non-technical users

The 3PL plans to build their own app eventually but needs interim solutions for current customers. Discussion remains open regarding which approach works best for seamless automation.

Summarized with AI on October 24. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi,

New here. I work at Ware-Pak, we are a 3PL and I have a ton of Shopify customers. Most of which are larger and they have their own IT staff. For our smaller companies, they don’t have an IT staff and I keep running into a consistent issue I’m looking to solve.

Most of them send us orders via SFTP. At the end of the day we load them a file to an outgoing SFTP box in a CSV format. They are having trouble finding an app that will automate both processes so they don’t have to manually upload them to the SFTP via Filezilla. Any recommendations? We will be building our own app for this, however, we have a few other projects before this. Thank you in advance!

2

Mechanic is probably your goto for this, examples https://tasks.mechanic.dev/?q=sftp

Reach out or request to PM with me if you need consultation services.

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4

Hi @Ware-Pak - this is a pretty common workflow I’ve seen come up with Shopify merchants and 3PLs. The mechanic.dev tool above looks promising, and I’ve also seen a few apps in the app store that can help with CSVs/SFTP. Can’t personally vouch for them, but ones like EZ Exporter, Matrixify, and Ordersify get mentioned a lot. Some of the reporting apps (Data Export IO, Reports Pundit) might also be able to handle scheduled exports.

The tricky part is usually formatting and nuances for 3PL workflows, like filtering to the right order status, making sure you don’t resend ones already sent, etc. Out of curiosity, would your ideal flow just be “drop the file in SFTP in the right format automatically”? I’ve wrestled with a lot of these integrations over the years, so I’m always interested in hearing what ends up working best for different providers.

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5

Hey there,

For automating uploads of Shopify order CSV exports to an SFTP server, our EZ Exporter app can help with this.

You can configure the app to only upload new orders since the last successful export and schedule it to run as frequently as every 15 minutes (if there are no new orders, no file will be uploaded).

We also have customers that use our EZ Fulfill app to then upload the tracking numbers from the 3PL and mark orders fulfilled (i.e. pull the new file from the SFTP server with the tracking numbers to update Shopify).

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

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6

Thank you for the comments. We have been able to navigate through them in most occasions. Where we tend to run into problems are for clients that don’t have on staff IT.

At Ware-Pak we can create anything on our end, the challenge has always been getting the data into a csv for example and then have it on a scheduler to load to the SFTP site. 15 min intervals are fine, we check in near real time anyways.

I appreciate the feedback, ultimately we are looking for a solution that offers our customers a seamless, fully automated solution for the the client and Ware-Pak.

2 Likes