Knowledgebase: Add-Ons

How do I Integrate my Store with Printful?

 

Printful is an on-demand drop shipping and fulfillment service that allows merchants to customize wearable products/accessories, and sell them online. Shift4Shop's integration with Printful allows you to download your customized Printful items and sell them directly from your Shift4Shop store. When your listed Printful items are purchased, Printful will apply your customizations to them and ship them out for you!

This article will show you how to integration your Shift4Shop store with Printful.

Note
The following article assumes that you have already created your Printful account. If you have not yet signed up with Printful, you may begin the process by clicking here.


Retrieving your Printful Private Token

When you create an account on Printful, you are given the ability to select and customize their products with your designs. This process involves creating a store on Printful that will house your selected products. To integrate your Shift4Shop store with Printful, you will need to first retrieve your Printful shop's Private Token.

Note
To retrieve your Private Token, you must first create a store on Printful for your products and enable API access to it. Please refer to Printful's help documentation for steps on this process.

  1. Sign into your Printful account. You will need to do so in order to retrieve the token.
  2. Using the left navigation on the Printful account, go to Tokens.
  3. From here, under Private Token, select Create a Token. This will take you to a new page.

  1. On the following page, you will need to enter a Token Name and contact email for Identification.
  2. For Access Level, select your Printful shop from the drop-down menu.

Note
If you do not see your store, it is likely because you did not yet create a store on Printful. Please be sure to complete that process before continuing with the steps found here.

  1. Enter an expiration date. The maximum this can be set to is 2 years within Printful's system.
  2. For Scopes, you will make sure all of the settings are selected.
  3. After, click on Create new token to be taken to your token.
  4. At this point, copy the token and you may proceed.


Installing the Shift4Shop Printful App

The next step in this process will be to install the Printful app that will let you connect Printful to your Shift4Shop store.

Click here to go to the Printful App on Shift4Shop's App Store.

  1. On the Printful App page, click on the "Install App" button

After clicking Shift4Shop's "Install App" button, you will see the following form:

  1. Enter your store's Secure URL and click on "Proceed"
    (be sure to use the https:// prefix as well.)

If you're not logged in already, you will be prompted to log into your Shift4Shop Online Store Manager

  1. Next, click the "Authorize" button to complete the app installation

Once complete, the page will refresh and you will see the following settings for Printful:

  • Forward order to Printful for orders in status
    Select which order status from your Shift4Shop store will be used to send the order to Printful (for fulfillment). In other words, if you select "Hold" then your Printful item orders will not be sent to be fulfilled until you move those orders into the Hold status of your Shift4Shop store.
  • Printful Private Token
    Here you will enter your API key from Printful (see step 3 above)
  • After order is on Printful move order status to
    Select which order status from your Shift4Shop store the order will be moved into after the order is successfully created on Printful. In other words, if you select "Processing" then your order on the Shift4Shop store will be moved to this status once Printful gets the order.

Enter your API key and configure your settings, and click on the "Save" button to proceed.

Tip
You can return to the app settings page by locating the REST API module in your store's Modules page. Printful will be listed as a REST API app.

Additionally, after the integration is complete, Printful will also be located on your store admin's left hand navigation bar for easy access right form your admin home page!


Import Products

Once the app is configured, your next step will be to Import your selected products from Printful into your Shift4Shop store.

  1. Click on the "Import Products" button.

This will show you a graph of the products you have created on Printful along with the number of variants each product has. From this page you can select all or some of your products in order to "fetch" them from Printful and import them into your store.

  1. Select the products you'd like to import from your Printful shop by marking their respective checkbox
    (or select all by clicking the top left checkbox)
  2. Click on the "Fetch Products" button and confirm to continue.

The store will begin the process of downloading the products and creating them on your Shift4Shop store. During this process, you'll be able to select whether the products will be placed in a category or whether you'd like them to be entered into a NEW category or an existing one.

Once you're satisfied with the import settings, click on "Import Products" to complete the process. When the import process is complete, you will be presented with a log of the Import history for your store.

Additional Information
The integration will download the selected products and create them on your Shift4Shop store. You should also be aware of the following:

  • The products will be assigned to "Printful" as their distributor in the product information settings.
    (Printful is added as a distributor to your store during the set up process)
  • The product base prices (on the information tab) will reflect the lowest price available on the product.
  • If the product has variants (i.e. different colors & sizes) these will be imported as Drop image options into the Shift4Shop store. (Drop images will be included)
  • The product options will also have their respective price increases added as values on the options tab
  • The product variants will also be treated as Advanced options on the Shift4Shop store with their respective code numbers form Printful
  • Each advanced option will have a default inventory stock of 1000. To replenish your "Stock" on the variants, simply repeat the import process.

Please also note that if you have multiple products on Printful with the same name, the import process may be interrupted or fail completely. Your Printful items (for import) should each have unique names and not already exist in the store.

Important
Please be aware that - after the products are imported from Printful - you cannot add additional options to the products form your Shift4Shop Online Store Manager. This would disrupt the synchronization process since the items are no longer identical to what's available on the Printful side.

After you're done with the above steps, the store will be integrated with your Printful products. Here's a basic view of the process flow for your store's Printful orders.

  • When your shoppers order a Printful product, they will pay for the order using your store's existing payment methods.
  • Once the order is placed on your Shift4Shop store, you can process the order by moving it into the "Forward order" status you selected to forward the order(s) to Printful.
  • Once the order is successfully pushed to Printful, it will go into the "After Order" status selected in the app settings.
  • Printful will take the order and prepare the product(s) according to your customizations and the customer's selected variants. Printful will then ship the order to the customer.
  • The Printful service will then send an update to move the order into your Shift4Shop store's Shipped status.
    • If the order is a multi item order that is partially fulfilled, the shipment will be automatically split on the Shift4Shop store.
    • Tracking information will also be included on the order when fulfilled

Meanwhile, Printful will charge you for their price on the selected items. Whatever profit is made on the order is yours to keep.


Removing Printful

If you'd like to remove the Printful Integration from your Shift4Shop store, follow these steps:

  1. Using the left hand navigation menu, click on Modules
  2. On Modules, use the search bar at the top and search for "REST API"
  3. Click on the "Settings" button found on the module
  4. Locate the PrintFul API APP and delete it.

Your store will no longer have the Printful integration on it.


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