Control How Orders Get Sent to Your Supplier — A Supply Master Walk-Through

A Shopify customer hits "place order" on a Bella+Canvas 3001 in heather grey, size large. From that moment you have a choice. Does the order go straight to your supplier, blind-labeled, shipped tomorrow? Does it sit in a daily batch you review at 4 pm? Does it wait for you to approve the artwork? Does it not go to the supplier at all because you decorate everything in-house from blanks you already hold?

That choice is yours. You make it once per supplier in Supply Master, and you can change it any time without losing a single order in flight.

This article walks through the four ways your Shopify orders can flow to your supplier, in plain English, with one shop archetype anchored to each. By the end you'll know exactly which mode fits your store, where it lives in the app, and how to flip it on (or off) without breaking what's already running.

Running example used throughout this article: Northside Print Co., a six-person screen-print shop that runs S&S Activewear for blanks and is testing ACC for a small dropship-only line of premium tees. They want every order routed differently depending on the supplier and the workflow.

Key Takeaways

• What this article shows — the four ways Shopify orders get to your supplier through Supply Master, framed by the merchant decision (decorate-first, dropship, batch, review), with a shop archetype anchored to each.
• Who it's for — Shopify apparel-store owners validating Supply Master's order-handoff capability before turning it on, plus existing customers deciding whether to switch modes.
• The fast answer — pick from four modes in Edit Supplier > Order Settings: Automatic (every 30 minutes), Scheduled (once per day at your chosen time), Manual (you click Submit Now), or Disabled (you handle ordering yourself). Most decorators start on Disabled or Manual; most pure dropshippers start on Automatic.
• What it doesn't do (yet) — multi-Shopify-order-into-one-PO consolidation, failed-order retry from the app, and per-order on-the-fly mode override are upcoming; today the recommended workarounds are the Scheduled batch mode for consolidation, support assistance for failed-order recovery, and a temporary mode switch for one-off holds.
• Try it now — Install Supply Master free on the Shopify App Store (5.0★, top-rated for apparel-supplier integration in the U.S. and Canada).
• Want help? — Email support@comstack.com and a Comstack engineer will configure order routing on your store with you.

Table of contents

• What "order handoff" actually means
• The four ways orders can go to your supplier
• Where this lives in Supply Master
• How real stores configure each mode
• Per-supplier, not per-store: a practical note
• What it doesn't do (yet)
• FAQ
• Try it on your store

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What "order handoff" actually means

When a Shopify customer pays for a Gildan 5000 on your store, the order lives in Shopify. Your supplier doesn't know about it yet.

Until something tells the supplier about it, three things have to happen by hand:

1. Someone reads the Shopify order.
2. Someone logs into the supplier's portal (or opens the supplier's spreadsheet template, or calls the rep).
3. Someone retypes the order — sku, size, color, quantity, ship-to address, customer name — into the supplier's system.

That is the "order handoff." It used to be a Saturday-morning chore for a five-person shop and a full-time job for a twenty-person shop. Supply Master removes the retyping, and lets you decide when the handoff happens — or skip it entirely if you ship the order yourself.

The setting that controls all of this is called Order Sync. Plain English: the rule that says when (or whether) your Shopify orders get sent to your supplier as a drop-ship purchase order. It lives on a tab called Edit Supplier > Order Settings, and it has four options.

A note on supplier coverage. As of this writing, Supply Master's automatic order handoff works for S&S Activewear (largest U.S. wholesale apparel supplier; eight warehouses) and suppliers that speak PromoStandards (the apparel-industry order-API standard). ACC is the most-used PromoStandards supplier on the platform today. SanMar and AlphaBroder order handoff is in development. Every other supplier (Cap America, Otto Cap, Goldstar, Champro, Augusta, AS Colour, Edwards, JDS Industries, Decky, Scrub Authority) is Disabled by default — you handle ordering through your normal channel and Supply Master keeps the catalog and stock fresh.

For the help-doc walkthroughs, see syncing orders with S&S Activewear and syncing orders with PromoStandards (ACC).

The four ways orders can go to your supplier

Each mode answers one question: how much human attention should each order get before it leaves your store?

Mode	When orders are placed	Who pushes the button	Best for
Automatically Fulfill Orders	Every ~30 minutes	Nobody — the app does it	Pure dropshippers, hands-off
Fulfill Orders at Scheduled Time	Once per day at your chosen time	Nobody — the app does it on schedule	Stores that consolidate daily
Manually Fulfill Orders	When you click Submit Now	You (or your fulfillment lead)	Decorators, QA-heavy shops
Disabled	Never	You — outside the app	Shops that decorate in-house

The rest of this section walks through each mode in plain English, with the in-app surface named where it matters.

Automatically Fulfill Orders

A Shopify customer pays. Within thirty minutes the app sends the matching purchase order to your supplier. The supplier picks, packs, and ships from their warehouse, blind-labeled with your shop as the return address. Tracking comes back into Shopify automatically.

You don't open the supplier's portal. You don't open the app. Your only job is to make sure the rest of your business — pricing, ad spend, customer service — is going well, because the order pipeline runs without you.

This is the right mode when you sell a product without changing it. Pure dropshippers. Resellers. The Comfort Colors 1717 you sold this morning is going to the customer in the same condition it leaves your supplier's warehouse.

You set this from Edit Supplier > Order Settings > Order Sync and pick Automatically Fulfill Orders. Save the supplier. The next eligible order will go out on the next ~30-minute cycle.

Fulfill Orders at Scheduled Time

A Shopify customer pays. The order waits in App Orders with a status of Queued. At your chosen time — say 4 pm in your local timezone — the app bundles every queued order from that day and sends them to your supplier in one batch. Tracking comes back into Shopify on the next sync.

Same hands-off feel as Automatic, but you control the cadence. Pure dropshippers don't usually need this. The shops that pick Scheduled are the ones that want to:

• Cut shipping cost by giving the supplier a denser daily batch (some suppliers route fewer shipments more efficiently).
• Match the supplier's daily cut-off time so today's orders ship today and don't get split across two ship dates.
• Give themselves a one-time-per-day window to spot a wrong order before it leaves.

You set this from Edit Supplier > Order Settings > Order Sync and pick Fulfill Orders at Scheduled Time. Pick the time of day under Order Placement Time. Save the supplier.

Manually Fulfill Orders

A Shopify customer pays. The order lands in App Orders with a status of Pending. It sits there. Nothing goes to the supplier until you (or someone on your team) opens the order, reviews it, and clicks Submit Now.

This mode trades a little speed for a lot of control. Use it when you want a human to look at every order before the supplier sees it. Decorators with art-approval workflows. Custom shops that occasionally need to merge two same-day orders. Stores that have just switched suppliers and want to walk-the-line for a week before letting the app run on its own.

App Orders also gives you Hold Order and Release Hold buttons. An order with a status of On Hold won't be sent even if you accidentally click Submit Now on the page — release the hold first. This is the safety net for "wait, don't ship that one yet."

You set this from Edit Supplier > Order Settings > Order Sync and pick Manually Fulfill Orders. Save the supplier. Make sure Advanced Settings > Orders Tab is set to Show Orders Tab so the queue shows up.

Disabled

A Shopify customer pays. Supply Master does nothing with the order. You handle the supplier purchase order through your normal channel — the supplier portal, your spreadsheet template, your phone call to the rep, your weekly batch.

This is the right mode for shops that decorate in-house from blanks they already hold. The Bella+Canvas 3001 the customer just bought is going to your shop's print rack, not to your supplier. There's no order to push.

This is also the right mode for any supplier that doesn't yet support automatic order handoff (every supplier other than S&S and PromoStandards suppliers like ACC). Supply Master keeps the catalog and stock fresh. You handle ordering when you replenish.

You set this from Edit Supplier > Order Settings > Order Sync and pick Disabled. Save the supplier. The Orders tab can be hidden under Advanced Settings > Orders Tab if you don't need it.

Where this lives in Supply Master

The screen names are the same on every supplier that supports order handoff. Here is the path:

1. Suppliers in the Supply Master sidebar.
2. Click the supplier name — for example S&S Activewear or ACC.
3. Click the Edit Supplier tab.
4. Open Order Settings. This is the screen with the four-option Order Sync dropdown.

Two adjacent tabs do related work; don't confuse them with Order Settings:

• Automatic Sync controls how often product, price, and stock data flows from the supplier to Shopify. It does not control order placement.
• Inventory Settings controls warehouse-to-Shopify-location mapping for stock counts. It is also where you map warehouses for S&S order routing if you choose From Fulfillment Locations.

The supplier-specific fields on Order Settings differ a little:

• S&S Activewear adds Warehouse Selection (auto-pick / from fulfillment locations / from line-item properties), Shipping Method (default Cheapest — S&S picks the most cost-effective ground option), and Order Payment Settings (email of your billing profile with a saved card, or type Credit if you have an approved credit account).
• PromoStandards suppliers (e.g., ACC) add PromoStandards Username and PromoStandards Password (separate from FTP or catalog credentials), Shipping Carrier (e.g., UPS), and Shipping Service (e.g., UPS GROUND).
• Both support a customizable Dropship PO Number (use Liquid like {{ shopifyOrderNumber }}-SHOPIFY to brand the PO number sent to the supplier).

For the deeper credential walk-through, see how to get your supplier credentials.

How real stores configure each mode

The four shop archetypes below cover most of what we see across the install base. Map yourself to the closest one.

Decorator: Disabled

Bayou Tees, a four-person screen-print shop in Louisiana.

They print Comfort Colors 1717 and Bella+Canvas 3001 from blanks they hold on a shelf in the back of the shop. When a Shopify customer orders a printed tee, the tee comes off that shelf, not from a supplier. They reorder blanks from S&S in batches every two weeks based on what's running low.

For S&S in Edit Supplier > Order Settings, Order Sync is set to Disabled. The catalog and stock keep refreshing on the schedule set under Automatic Sync. The Orders tab is hidden under Advanced Settings > Orders Tab. Reorders go through the regular S&S dealer portal on a Tuesday-and-Friday cadence.

If Bayou Tees later decides to add a non-decorated dropship line — say, a stock-color Bella+Canvas blank that customers want shipped same-day — they add a separate Shopify product line for that, leave the existing decorated products alone, and switch a copy of S&S to Automatically Fulfill Orders against just the dropship-eligible products. The decorator workflow doesn't change. The dropship workflow runs in parallel. (This pattern gets its own deep-dive in the decorator-and-dropship-from-one-store playbook.)

Pure dropshipper: Automatically Fulfill Orders

Coastline Apparel Co., a national wholesale-apparel reseller running entirely on S&S.

They sell stock-color blanks at a 1.4× markup. They do not customize anything. Their customer expects "ships in two business days," which is what S&S delivers from whichever of the eight S&S warehouses is closest to the customer's zip.

For S&S in Edit Supplier > Order Settings:

• Order Sync: Automatically Fulfill Orders.
• Warehouse Selection: Auto Select Warehouses (S&S picks the closest-with-stock for every order).
• Shipping Method: Cheapest (let S&S route on cost).
• Order Payment Settings: their billing-profile email with a saved card on the S&S account.
• Dropship PO Number: {{ shopifyOrderNumber }}-DS so they can spot Supply-Master-placed POs in S&S reports.

The result. A Shopify customer in Phoenix orders a Gildan 5000. Within 30 minutes Supply Master places the order at S&S. S&S picks from Reno (closest warehouse with stock), packs blind-labeled with Coastline's return address, ships UPS Ground. Tracking comes back into Shopify automatically. Coastline's owner does nothing.

Hybrid scheduled-batch: Fulfill Orders at Scheduled Time

Maple Print Studio, a regional decorator in Ontario who also runs a small ACC dropship line.

For their decorated S&S blanks, they're on Disabled (same as Bayou Tees above). For the ACC dropship line, they want all of today's drops to leave together at the end of their printing day so ACC ships them on the same daily cut.

For ACC in Edit Supplier > Order Settings:

• Order Sync: Fulfill Orders at Scheduled Time.
• Order Placement Time: 4:00 pm in their local timezone (right after they shut down the press for the day).
• PromoStandards Username and PromoStandards Password: their ACC PromoStandards API credentials (different from the regular ACC catalog login).
• Shipping Carrier: UPS.
• Shipping Service: UPS GROUND.
• Dropship PO Number: {{ shopifyOrderNumber }}-MPS for ACC report tracking.

The result. Every ACC order from a Shopify customer between 4:01 pm yesterday and 4:00 pm today gets placed in one batch at 4 pm sharp. ACC picks the whole batch on one warehouse pull, which usually saves Maple a couple of dollars in per-shipment handling vs the every-30-minute mode.

QA-heavy custom shop: Manually Fulfill Orders

Pinnacle Promo Group, a corporate-merch shop in Texas running a single-employer program for a healthcare client.

Every order on the program is partly customized — embroidered logo on a SanMar Port Authority polo, plus a stock S&S Comfort Colors tee for the new-hire welcome kit. The S&S tee piece can be dropshipped. But the customer is the same hospital's HR department, and Pinnacle's contract requires every shipment to carry the right cost-center code on the packing slip. They want a human to verify every PO before it goes to S&S.

For S&S in Edit Supplier > Order Settings:

• Order Sync: Manually Fulfill Orders.
• Warehouse Selection: From Line Item Properties (the cost-center code drives the warehouse choice via a warehouse line-item property they add at Shopify checkout).
• Shipping Method: UPS GROUND.
• Dropship PO Number: {{ shopifyOrderNumber }}-{{ properties.cost_center }} so the cost-center code lands on the S&S packing slip.

The morning routine. The fulfillment lead opens App Orders for S&S, sees the overnight queue, opens each one, verifies the cost-center, and clicks Submit Now. Anything that needs a hold for a question to the customer gets Hold Order; the order stays in the queue with a status of On Hold until they Release Hold and Submit Now. Failed orders show the error in Details (Pinnacle calls support if it's an account issue; failed orders cannot be retried from the app, so duplicates are not possible).

This mode trades a few minutes of human attention for a contract-grade audit trail.

Per-supplier, not per-store: a practical note

Order Sync is set on each supplier individually. A store running three suppliers can have three different modes at the same time. Supply Master will look at every Shopify order, identify which supplier each line item came from, and route each line per that supplier's Order Sync mode.

A worked example. Pinnacle Promo Group (above) actually runs three suppliers:

• S&S Activewear — Manually Fulfill Orders. Verified by hand each morning.
• SanMar US — Disabled. SanMar order handoff is in development; Pinnacle places SanMar POs through the SanMar dealer portal in a Tuesday batch.
• Cap America — Disabled. Cap America has no automatic order handoff yet; Pinnacle reorders headwear monthly through the regular Cap America channel.

A single Shopify order containing items from all three suppliers gets handled correctly: the S&S items appear in S&S's App Orders queue waiting for Submit Now; the SanMar and Cap America items show in Shopify normally and are handled by the team's existing reorder process. Nothing crosses lines.

If you want the full multi-supplier playbook with one unified workflow on top, see Sell from Three Suppliers Without Running Three Apps.

What it doesn't do (yet)

Three honest limits worth knowing as you validate.

• Multi-Shopify-order-into-one-PO consolidation is not in the app yet. If the same customer places three orders for the same Gildan 5000 in one day, the app sends three separate POs to S&S (one per Shopify order). The Scheduled mode batches multiple-customer orders into one daily run, but it doesn't merge them into a single PO. True multi-Shopify-order-into-one-PO consolidation is on the roadmap. Until it ships, the workaround for shops that need this is the daily batch via Fulfill Orders at Scheduled Time.
• Failed orders cannot be retried from the app. This is intentional — retry would create duplicate POs at the supplier. If an order fails (typically because of a credentials issue, a payment-profile issue at S&S, or a mismatch between the Shopify line item and the supplier catalog), the order shows the error in Details and your support contact at Comstack will help resolve. The order can then be re-placed correctly without a duplicate.
• Per-Shopify-order, on-the-fly mode override is not exposed. Today every order from a given supplier follows that supplier's Order Sync setting. If you need a one-off (e.g., "this single order should be held for art approval even though we're on Automatically Fulfill Orders"), the workaround is to set the supplier to Manually Fulfill Orders for that day, handle the queue manually, and switch back to Automatically Fulfill Orders once the held order ships. Per-order overrides via line-item properties are an upcoming improvement.

If any of these matter to your workflow, mention them when you email support@comstack.com — Comstack tracks roadmap requests against the install base and prioritizes the ones that real shops are asking for.

FAQ

How is this different from a Shopify-only fulfillment workflow?

Plain Shopify "fulfilled" status doesn't tell your supplier anything. Your warehouse or 3PL fulfills, then you mark the Shopify order as fulfilled. With Supply Master's Order Sync, the supplier is the fulfillment, and the app is the handoff. There's no spreadsheet, no portal login, no retyping of the address.

Will this work for SanMar?

Not yet. Supply Master keeps the SanMar catalog and stock fresh on every sync, and full SanMar order handoff is in development. Until it ships, set SanMar to Disabled under Edit Supplier > Order Settings and keep placing SanMar POs through your existing SanMar process. The same applies to AlphaBroder. Per the Supply Master features by supplier compatibility matrix, all other built-in suppliers are also Disabled by default for the same reason — Supply Master is catalog-and-stock-only for them today.

Will this work for ACC?

Yes. ACC supports order handoff through PromoStandards. Use Edit Supplier > Order Settings > Order Sync and pick the mode that fits your workflow (Automatically Fulfill Orders, Fulfill Orders at Scheduled Time, or Manually Fulfill Orders). You'll need ACC's PromoStandards API credentials, which are different from the regular ACC catalog login — request them from your ACC rep. For the tactical playbook, see Hand Off Your Dropship Orders Without Touching the Supplier Portal Again.

How long does it take to set up?

About five minutes per supplier once the credentials are in hand and you know which mode you want. Most stores can switch modes any time without losing orders in flight — orders that have already been sent stay sent; orders that haven't been sent are evaluated against the new rule on the next cycle.

What about my custom price rules and warehouse mappings?

Order Sync does not change Match Fields (your pricing and product-data rules) or Inventory Settings (your warehouse-to-Shopify-location mapping). Each is configured independently. For S&S specifically, Inventory Settings > Warehouse Mapping interacts with Order Settings > Warehouse Selection if you pick From Fulfillment Locations — see setting up inventory by warehouse location.

How do I switch modes without breaking what's running?

Open Edit Supplier > Order Settings, change Order Sync to the new mode, save the supplier. The next order is evaluated against the new mode. Orders that were already in flight (already sent to the supplier) are not affected — only orders not yet sent change behavior. If you're moving from Disabled to Manually Fulfill Orders for the first time, set Advanced Settings > Orders Tab to Show Orders Tab so your App Orders queue is visible.

What happens if my supplier API is down when an order should ship?

The order stays in App Orders with the appropriate status (Queued for Automatic / Scheduled, Pending for Manual). The next processing cycle (~30 minutes for Automatic, your scheduled time for Scheduled) will retry placement. If a specific order fails permanently, the error appears in Details and the order is not re-attempted automatically — that's by design, to avoid duplicate POs at the supplier.

Can the Comstack team set this up for me?

Yes. Email support@comstack.com. A Comstack engineer will walk through credential validation (S&S web-services, PromoStandards API), pick the right Order Sync mode for your workflow, configure warehouse and shipping settings, and verify the first order end-to-end with you. Most setup calls take 30 to 45 minutes.

What if my workflow doesn't match any of the four modes?

Most workflows we see fit one of the four. The few that don't (e.g., "automatic dropship for stock items, manual review for embroidered items") usually run on two parallel supplier connections — one configured Automatically Fulfill Orders against the dropship-eligible filtered subset, one configured Manually Fulfill Orders against the embroidered subset. The pattern gets its own playbook in Run Decorator Jobs and Dropship Orders from One Store, Without Mixing Them Up.

What does it cost?

Free trial. Plans scale with variant count and update volume; order routing is included on every plan that supports the supplier's order handoff. Exact pricing on the App Store listing.

Try it on your store

Order routing is the difference between a Saturday-morning chore and a Tuesday-morning report. Supply Master gives you the four-mode dial so the same store can run a hands-off dropship line and a hand-reviewed corporate-merch line at the same time.

1. Install Supply Master free on the Shopify App Store — 5.0★, top-rated for apparel-supplier integration in the U.S. and Canada.
2. Or email support@comstack.com — a Comstack engineer will configure Order Sync on your suppliers with you, in one call.

Comstack has been building integrations for apparel and promo suppliers since 2012. If your shop knows what it wants the order handoff to look like, the right mode for your store is one tab away.

Pick the mode. Save the supplier. The handoff runs itself.