You just landed your first sale on your ecommerce store.
So how long does the order fulfillment take before it gets shipped out?
Hey, it’s Wes from Printful!
In today’s video, we’re talking about Printful’s order fulfillment.
You’ll find out what it means,
how long it takes,
and what Printful fulfillment statuses mean.
If you want to be up to date with the latest ecommerce trends,
subscribe to our channel today and switch on the notifications
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Let’s begin.
Printful fulfills orders that come from your ecommerce store once they are paid by you.
This is done automatically once you've set up your billing.
There are two models of fulfillment with Printful:
our Print-on-demand model
and Warehousing model.
Our estimated times are 2–7 business days for on-demand apparel products,
and 2–5 business days for non-apparel products.
Make sure to specify the 2–7 business day fulfillment speed in your product description
to manage customer expectations.
For warehousing, we offer same-day fulfillment and shipping
for orders that have been submitted by 12PM.
This applies to orders containing only warehouse items that are in stock.
For mixed orders that contain both warehouse and print-on-demand items,
our regular 2–7 business day fulfillment time applies.
Warehousing orders that have been submitted after 12PM
get fulfilled and shipped out on the next business day.
Make sure to visit to visit our Warehousing & Fulfillment page
to find out how this service works and how your business can benefit from it.
I’ll leave a link to it in the description below.
It’s important to understand that our product fulfillment time is independent of shipping time.
These are two separate operations.
Our order fulfillment process is made up of many steps,
and the very first one is checking that the designs follow our content and printing guidelines.
We try to check all print designs for any possible issues.
For embroidered graphics that don't follow the guidelines
we even provide alterations that would produce
the best possible results at no additional cost.
It's also important to keep in mind that we order necessary stock from our suppliers and
it can take up to 3 business days to arrive.
This restocking time is included in the estimated fulfillment times.
To find more information about product stock availability,
log in to your Printful account,
and on the home page, select “Products & Pricing”.
Then choose any product you’re interested in and then click on “Availability”.
Here, you can see the availability of each product variant.
As thousands of orders go through Printful,
you want to make sure that everything`s in stock,
so that your order can get straight to fulfillment and shipped to your customer.
To help you stay up to date with the fulfillment process,
each order comes with a status you can check
on your Printful Dashboard in the “Orders” tab.
We’ll go over every one of them right now, so keep watching.
Waiting for Fulfillment.
You will see this status whenever a new order gets submitted and received by Printful.
It means that we got your order and it's waiting in queue for fulfillment,
at this moment no action is necessary from your side.
It’s important to note that at this stage it’s still possible
to make adjustments to the order and cancel it if necessary.
Being Fulfilled.
Once the fulfillment process has begun, the order status will display “Being Fulfilled”.
Fulfilled.
You’ll see this status when the order is printed, packaged, and shipped out.
The tracking information button should appear next to your shipment information
and if the level of service selected for shipping includes tracking,
your updates should go live within 24 hours.
We’ll notify you when the shipping label has been printed, and the order is ready for shipping.
You can adjust how and where you receive different types of notifications in your store settings.
Partially Fulfilled.
If your order contains products that don’t ship together,
you may see the order as “Partially Fulfilled”.
This means some items from your order have already been fulfilled and shipped,
and we're still working on the remaining ones.
You will see tracking information for any packages that have already been shipped out.
Draft.
Orders that appear as “Draft” are the ones you have submitted but haven't completed.
These orders won't be pushed to fulfillment until you complete them.
You'll see this status when you've created an order and saved it as a draft,
or when you've left the “Review Order” page without completing the order.
You can complete it anytime by selecting it and pressing “Confirm order”.
This will take you to the next page where you’ll be able to edit your order
and complete the checkout process.
Failed.
This status appears when the transaction for the order has failed.
There are three main reasons for getting this status.
Let’s go over each and look at the possible solutions
to get your order back on track.
No payment method.
This means that you need to add a payment method to your account.
To fix this, provide all the necessary information under the “Billing” tab.
Then confirm the order to finish submitting it.
We have a video on how to set up billing with Printful,
there’s a link to it in the description below.
Make sure to check it out after this video.
Insufficient funds.
Earlier we stated that Printful fulfills imported orders from your ecommerce store
once they are paid by you.
If your payment method has insufficient funds, the order will appear as “Failed”.
To fix this, update your balance and confirm the order to finish submitting it.
Other problems with your payment method.
Certain transaction problems depend on the payment method that you use.
It’s best to get in touch with your credit card issuer or financial institution
to confirm the specific reason why the transaction has failed.
Not Synced.
When an order is imported into Printful with unsynced items,
the system doesn’t know what to print and fulfillment can’t begin.
This means you will have to manually sync the items.
Order syncing means that you assign an item from our catalog
with your design to the product variant from your ecommerce store.
This is not an automatic process and you need to synchronize every product manually.
When an imported order contains a product
that’s fulfilled by another service, you can ignore it.
From the “Orders” tab located in the Printful dashboard,
select the order by clicking on it.
A new window will open up, where you need to press “Complete order”
and then in the next window press “Ignore” under the unsynced product.
Here's what you need to do to sync a product that should be fulfilled by Printful.
If your product listing was created manually on your ecommerce store
or the ecommerce platform that you use
does not support Printful’s product push generator,
go to the “Orders” tab in your Printful Dashboard.
Select the order that contains an unsynced item.
A window will open up where you need to press “Complete order”.
In the next window under the unsynced item click “Sync product”.
Then select “New product” and create an item with the right model,
color, size and design that is shown on your store.
If the Printful product push generator works with your ecommerce store,
follow the same steps up to the point where you select a new product,
but instead select “Synced items”
and there select an existing product variation
that matches the one in the order.
Once that­’s done, finish the rest of the order.
Needs Approval.
This status appears when imported orders need manual confirmation,
which can happen in the following cases.
The product wasn't synced when the order was submitted.
You have manual order confirmation setting enabled.
To change that, from the Printful Dashboard, select “Settings”.
Under “Stores”, click on “Orders”
and under “Order import settings”
check “Automatically confirm orders to be fulfilled”
to disable manual confirmation.
If you are selling personalized products on your store.
They will appear on your Printful dashboard with a bright blue letter “P” next to it
and will require manual confirmation.
You have a specific fulfillment center selected in your settings,
but the ordered items cannot be fulfilled at this center.
The order will have to be manually completed by routing it to another fulfillment center
or selecting a different item.
An item in the order is discontinued.
To proceed, you have to either remove or replace the discontinued item, and then approve it.
On Hold.
When you get this status, it means we've put your order on hold
and need to get in contact with you.
This happens when an item is out of stock
or if there is a matter related to graphics or mockups.
Always check the hold notes we've provided
and contact our support team as soon as possible
to get your order back on track.
Canceled.
This status appears when you've canceled an order while it was waiting for fulfillment.
When you cancel the order, you'll be refunded for the fulfillment.
The refund will go to the payment method used while placing the order.
If you need to re-submit an order just like the one you canceled,
you can create a duplicate by clicking “Copy Order”.
Returned.
This status indicates that an order has been returned to Printful.
Returns are a normal part of any sales process.
Make sure to check out Printful's return policy,
and let your customers know about how you handle returns.
That about sums it up.
In order to maintain a successful ecommerce business
reserve some free time on a daily basis to manage your store
and stay updated on the fulfillment status of your orders.
This will help you run things efficiently
and help us get your products to your customers faster.
If you have any questions about our fulfillment process
make sure to leave them in the comments below!