Troubleshooting Fulfillment Rules

If a rule doesn't trigger, it's because of 1 of the reasons below.

Open the order details page in Shopify, read the order timeline to see what events took place, then go through this checklist to see why something didn't process as you expected.

Reasons Shopify doesn't trigger the action

❌ The order was on hold when Order Automator processed it

If you have a checkout upsell app or an app that puts an order on hold, fulfillment actions are not possible until that hold is released
✅ Solution: See About order holds below to test and solve

❌ The rule condition doesn't match the order data exactly

Rule condition(s) need to match the Shopify data exactly at the time the order is processed (Case matters)
✅ Solution: Check the rule vs order data, adjust, then test by process the order again manually.

❌ Shopify does not permit the action. Ex: no inventory at the destination location

Shopify rejects a fulfillment or location change if the destination location has no inventory
Even digital products need to be assigned to an inventory location

❌ The order was not paid and you have the setting to only process paid orders

✅ Solution: Check the setting at the bottom of the Auto Fulfill page for processing paid orders, and compare with the order payment status at the time it was processed by Order Automator

❌ You have multiple fulfillment rules with different actions that matched the line item

✅ Solution: The most recently updated fulfillment rule takes priority. If you want a different rule to take priority, edit that rule or add extra conditions to make sure only that rule matches the line item

❌ The rule was not enabled

✅ Solution: click the icon in the Enabled column next to the rule

About order holds

Some apps put a hold on new orders for a set time. During this hold, fulfillment actions aren't possible.

See Testing Orders to quickly test this by rerunning your fulfillment rule.

If the test does not trigger the rule, it's one of the other reasons above.

If it triggers the rule it means the order was on hold at the initial time of processing, but now the hold been released. This solution solves that problem:

Go to the Dashboard page in Order Automator and set a delay for 65 minutes
Most of the time the hold period is 60 minutes, but if you want to confirm, contact the app that holds orders and ask how long is the max hold time

Submitting a ticket

If you went through the checklist and couldn't identify the reason, send the information below and we'll help you understand why.

The url of the order details page (to get the order ID + your store ID)
Screenshot of the order details (top part of the order details page in Shopify admin)
Screenshot of the order timeline (timeline of events on the order details page)
Screenshot or description of the rule you expected to trigger