Introduction Guide to Multishipping

Giftship’s multishipping feature allows customers to send products to multiple addresses by creating a unique order for each destination. Before enabling this feature, please review the following details and linked resources.

The Multishipping Customer Flow

1. A customer visits your store and adds products and various quantities to their cart.
   
2. They are presented with a “Ship to Multiple Addresses” call to action. By default, this appears at the top of the cart page or in the footer of Giftship’s drawer cart. You can also place this link elsewhere in your store or embed it in your native cart.
   
3. After clicking the option, the customer is forwarded to the multishipping cart page where they assign products to various addresses. If the customer is signed into their account, their saved addresses will appear in dropdowns beside each product. They can also choose to enter a new address if needed.
   
4. At checkout, they select shipping rates for each destination, and any cart options you’ve configured for single-address orders will appear beneath each destination for multi-address orders.
   
5. Clicking Continue to Payment creates a draft order. Once paid, the draft becomes a live parent order tagged with ms_order, which is then picked up by the multi-address backend processors.

Preview this flow on our demo store:

How Orders Are Processed in the Backend

• A parent order is created, tagged with ms_order, and payment is captured on this order.
  
• The parent order is then automatically canceled and archived.
  
• Child orders are created for each shipping address, tagged with ms_fulfillment_order and created_from_order_number.

By default, child orders display Giftship as the payment gateway. Giftship never processes or collects payment on your behalf.

Order Cancellation Tasks

Order Confirmation Emails

Since the parent order is canceled, Shopify’s native cancellation email is suppressed. Customers will still receive the confirmation email for the parent order, which by default includes a “View Order” call to action. If clicked, they’ll see that the order was canceled.

To avoid confusion, use our template, which replaces the “View Order” button with a “View Shop” link and breaks down the order by destination.

🔗 Update your Order Confirmation template

Customer Accounts

Shopify offers two types of customer accounts:

• Classic accounts (Recommended)  – This method uses your theme’s markup. You can add Liquid conditionals to hide canceled parent orders from customers.
  
• New accounts – This method is restricted by Shopify and does not allow hiding parent orders. Instead, you can use Giftship’s App Messaging Block to display a clear message when viewing the parent order. The message reads:

“Your order has not been canceled. New orders were created for each shipping address. Please disregard the ‘Order Canceled’ notice.”

How to Refund a Multi-Address Order

Because payment is always captured on the parent order, refunds must be processed on the parent order (not on the child orders).

How to add Gift Messages & Delivery Dates

There are several ways to collect gift messages, delivery dates, and other Giftship-related fields:

1. Product options – These appear above the Add to Cart button on the single product page. Information collected here populates the line item properties of an order. However, for multishipping, this can become complex if customers add multiple products with different gift messages, as fulfillment may be harder to manage.
   
2. Cart options (recommended) – These appear on the cart page for single-address orders, or on the shipping rates page for multi-address orders. Information collected at the cart level populates the Additional Details section of an order. This method is recommended because it ensures one gift message per order, per destination.

Troubleshooting Shipping Rates

When a customer reaches the shipping rates page, Giftship queries Shopify’s Shipping Rates API for each destination. The API will return all available rates based on the customer’s address and the products in their cart, whether you are using Shopify’s native shipping profiles or a third-party shipping app.

Troubleshooting Discounts

Because a multi-address order creates a unique order for each destination, discount setup requires special consideration. For example, restrictions such as “one use per customer” or “applies once per order” are evaluated per destination, not across the entire multi-address order.