Easily connect SubscriptionFlow with ShipStation to streamline your order fulfillment process. This integration automatically syncs subscription orders from SubscriptionFlow to ShipStation, allowing you to manage the shipping and logistics from shipstation while managing subscription orders and billing from SubscriptionFlow.
Integration Installation and Setting up:
Goto admin dashboard and proceed to the Apps section. There scroll down till you find the Ecommerce section where you can select ShipStation.
Here you will need to provide the API Key and API Secret Key to establish a connection between the two services. These can be accessed from the shipstation instance. Head over to Settings, Account and then API settings.
Once you have entered the correct credentials and hit connect, you will be shown a screen like this, which means you have successfully created an active installation of the ShipStation App
Understanding The Validation Checks:
Each time an invoice is created and then paid, SubscriptionFlow will attempt to post the invoice as a ShipStation order. There are however some checks that are required before an order is posted.
Plan SKU Check
Note that it is possible for a scenario where you don't want certain products/plans to be sent to ShipStation. Thus it is a requirement for each SubscriptionFlow plan to have an ‘SKU’ set, only then will SubscriptionFlow post those orders.
For example : ‘I only want Products/Plans X,Z to be posted to ShipStation while leaving out Product/Plan Y orders’
To implement this, we first must go to Settings -> Studio -> Plans. Here we will create a field called ‘SKU’ and save it.
On the main ShipStation configuration page, we will see a dropdown list that will allow you to select the newly created field. Save that field name.
Now goto the Plans you want to sync with ShipStation and add their respective SKUs. Note that it does not validate if these SKUs actually exist/ does not exist, these are here to let SubscriptionFlow know which orders should be posted on ShipStation, thus it's up to you how you manage your inventory.
Customer Shipping/Billing Address
ShipStation validates if the order posted has a customer with any missing information from their billing/shipping address.
Hence please make sure that each customer who has their order being posted onto ShipStation does not have missing information for their shipping/billing addresses
Posting ShipStation Orders (Vertical)
Assuming you have enabled magazine vertical setting from services, the products now may have product features within them. SubscriptionFlow will handle the posting of multiple product features into ShipStation.
Note : for the test of this guide, we will assume the product features are magazine issues although the product feature handling for shipstation should be the same for any other case as well.
For Example ‘I have a customer with a monthly subscription for a magazine collection. After the customer pays for the monthly invoice, they are entitled to a shipment of an issue of the magazine each week’
To create this type of subscription, we must create a subscription order for an evergreen subscription with a recurring monthly charge of these magazine issues.
This subscription will now contain all the upcoming issues for the volume starting from the closest issue to the start date.
This will also create a corresponding invoice for the subscription, which will contain the issues for the entire period of the charge which for this subscription is monthly.
And thus, once the invoice is paid, like in the non vertical example, the order is posted to ShipStation. However, since this invoice has multiple product features, we are creating multiple orders for each issue that will be shipped.
Please note that the ‘ship by’ date on ShipStation is obtained from the ‘issue date’ of the product feature as shown below.
SubscriptionFlow
ShipStation
Since the Subscription creates an invoice each month for the customer, each time that is paid, SubscriptionFlow will automatically post the orders to ShipStation.
Note: the remaining sections requires some technical background
Posting Updated/Imported/Old Orders
This section is for those who run into the case of posting orders that are already paid but not synced with ShipStation. Perhaps you want to attempt to repost orders that failed validation checks or have recently imported some invoices into SubscriptionFlow but they are already paid.
Make sure you have the developer mode enabled
Now goto Schedules from settings and create a new schedule. Make sure to select ‘ShipStationSyncResources’ from the command. Choose a reasonable frequency to set this (like ‘Every Day’) and a suitable name.
Now this will run each day on the specified time and attempt to create/update all invoices..
Debugging Issues/Errors
On the ShipStation page, there is a ‘logs’ section which documents the state of each invoice being posted to ShipStation, here you can find any validation or other errors that may block your orders.
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