ShipStation Integration Guide Basics - Non Vertical

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 (Non Vertical)

Products are non-vertical by default, which means they do not include product features such as magazine issues.

In the following example we are creating a basic termed subscription with the one time charge product plan listing. This subscription order will create an invoice.

The following created invoice has yet not been posted to ShipStation as it is not ‘Paid’ yet. Only paid invoices will be posted to ShipStation. 

Once the invoice is paid, SubscriptionFlow will automatically try to post to ShipStation. Upon successful sync, the shipstation order id will be stored on the invoice along with the shipping order status

On ShipStation we can observe the newly created order

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.