Shipments
Shipments track the physical fulfillment of your orders. Every time items leave an inventory source on their way to a customer, Commerce Kitty records a shipment.
How shipments relate to orders
An order can have one shipment or many. A simple order that ships out in one box has a single shipment. An order that spans two warehouses, or a bulky order that goes in two separate packages, can have multiple shipments, one per drop.
Commerce Kitty decides how many shipments an order needs based on your inventory sources. When the order is placed, it walks through sources in priority order and creates a shipment for each source that will send items. If the whole order can come from one source, you get one shipment. If it needs to split, you get more.
Shipment states
Cart
The shipment is attached to an order still being built. Nothing is committed to fulfillment yet.
Ready
The shipment is ready to be packed and shipped. It has been assigned to a source and is waiting on the physical fulfillment step. This is where most shipments sit between order import and shipping.
Shipped
The shipment has gone out. Tracking info is usually recorded at this point and pushed back to the source channel so the customer can track the package.
Cancelled
The shipment was cancelled before it shipped. This usually happens when the order itself is cancelled.
Shipment fields
Source
The inventory source the shipment is coming from. Commerce Kitty picks this automatically based on source priority and available stock.
Carrier
The carrier handling the package. USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, and so on. Recorded when tracking info is added.
Shipping method
The service level used, such as Ground, Priority, or Express. Some channels pass this in with the order; others let you choose at fulfillment time.
Tracking number
The carrier's tracking number for the package. Commerce Kitty can push this back to the channel the order came from so the customer gets the same tracking info on the marketplace that placed the order.
Fulfillment plugins
Most sellers do not create shipments by hand. A fulfillment plugin does it for them. ShipStation is the common one. When you ship a label through ShipStation, the plugin syncs the tracking number, carrier, and service back into Commerce Kitty. Commerce Kitty then updates the shipment to shipped and pushes that info back out to the original channel.
This is the whole loop in one sentence: order imported from Shopify, fulfilled in ShipStation, tracking synced to Commerce Kitty, tracking pushed to Shopify, customer gets their email with the tracking link. You do not have to copy anything by hand.
Printful works similarly for print-on-demand products. The Printful plugin owns fulfillment end-to-end and reports back when items ship.
Manual shipment creation
If you do not use a fulfillment plugin, you can mark shipments as shipped from the order detail page. Enter the tracking number and carrier, mark the shipment as shipped, and Commerce Kitty will push that information back to the source channel just like it would for a plugin-driven fulfillment.
Push-back of tracking to the source channel depends on the plugin. Shopify, Amazon, eBay, and Etsy all accept tracking updates. Check the specific plugin docs if you are not sure.