---
title: "Fulfillment"
canonical: "https://help.liftoffcommerce.com/space/KB/2732392467/Fulfillment"
format: markdown
---
When figuring out how your products need to be fulfilled (i.e., any combination of produced, customized, packed, or shipped) after checkout, it's easy to configure production and delivery of a product in whatever way you require. In order to both eliminate redundant work and allow for a variety of simple or complex fulfillment chains, the idea is to create pre-configured **fulfillment *****workflows*** and attach them to any grouping of products you need.
# Getting started
Before creating or changing a fulfillment workflow, it's important to understand where you are in your Liftoff journey. There are a few key things you should know to make sure everything goes smoothly and fits your needs.
**New to Liftoff?**
If you've just signed up for a new Liftoff subscription or are setting up a new account, you might encounter this message when trying to create your first fulfillment workflow:
If you see this message, take a moment to set up a [new vendor](https://help.liftoffcommerce.com/space/KB/2731933769) before continuing with the guide. This step is necessary to move forward with creating your fulfillment workflow.
**Established in Liftoff?**
If this isn’t your first account or if your account has been set up for a while, the system has likely already created one or more fulfillment workflows based on products you've set up before. In this case, you can either create a new workflow or edit any of the existing ones as needed.
# Account-level workflows
Liftoff distinguishes between "account-level" and "subscriber-level" views for your fulfillment workflows.
- **Account-level** tools focus on just one specific account (the one selected in the account dropdown). These tools can be found in the left-hand menu under the account's name.
- **Subscriber-level** tools allow you to manage multiple accounts at once and can be found under *All Accounts* in the left-hand menu. If you're only managing your own Liftoff account (like for your company), you won’t have access to these global tools.
In simpler terms, you can think of subscriber-level as "global" tools and account-level as "local" tools.
This article primarily covers the account-level tools and views.
## Create a new workflow
To set up your first workflow, go to **Products > Fulfillment Workflows**. Then, click the green *Add Workflow* button at the top of the screen to get started.
### Description of fields
**Workflow Name: **This is exactly what it appears to be. When you go to associate a workflow with one of your products, this is the name you'll look for.
**Workflow Code: **This will pop up later in this article, especially where "batch jobs" are concerned. It'll be very important for applying a single workflow to a whole bunch of products all at once.
The field will automatically fill in based on what you enter in the *Workflow Name* field, and the values will match exactly. You can change it if you’d like, but keep in mind that this field only accepts letters and numbers—no special characters like hyphens or underscores.
**Post Manually: **This field, when enabled, allows an admin user to manually post POs to vendors. Orders with existing integrations will not be posted automatically. For more information on manual posting, please refer to the guide [here](https://liftoffcommerce.atlassian.net/wiki/pages/resumedraft.action?draftId=3586326541&draftShareId=42b875f3-164d-4e78-a0e0-41f088861574).
**Default Workflow Vendor: **The purpose of this field will become clearer when we go over the configuration options later. For now, simply select the vendor you'll use most often. Don’t worry, you can always change this value later.
Once you've filled out the form, click the *Create Workflow* button at the top. This will take you to the *Edit *screen, where you can finish configuring your new workflow. You'll find details on how to edit a workflow below.
## Edit or view a workflow
Now that you have a workflow created, navigating back to **Products > Fulfillment Workflows** will show you the table of workflows currently available to your selected account.
There's quite a bit of information packed into this table. Let's understand what it's telling us.
- **Name** and **Code:** These are exactly what you chose at the time you created each workflow.
- **Vendors:** Every vendor involved in each workflow will appear here. This gives you a good "at a glance" view of which workflow is which, as well as how each one is configured. You'll notice that, in parentheses, *Rating* and *Inventory* show up next to one or more of these vendors; this tells you which vendor Liftoff uses to determine the shipping charges for associated products, and which vendor's inventory is being used to determine stock levels for associated products. These can be the same vendor or different ones.
- **Usage:** This is a quick count of how many products are associated with each workflow. There is currently no way to view a list of these; a list function will be available in a future development.
- **Actions:** You can view any workflow you like (and the *View* button is how you'd edit one, too). If you see that the *Delete* button is disabled (i.e., semi-opaque and not clickable), it's because the given workflow is either associated with one or more products, available to more than one account, or both. At the account level (which is our current view), a workflow can only be deleted when it's tied to no products and just one account.
**View the details of a workflow**
Clicking a blue *View* (for subscriber-level workflows) or *Edit *(for account-level workflows) button in the table will show you the details of its associated workflow. Here at the account-level view, the workflow may or may not be editable, depending on whether or not it's been assigned to an account other than the one you've currently selected.
If the workflow you select has been assigned to more than one account, then it'll look like this when you click the *View* button:
The blue callout will remind you of the situation when a workflow is assigned to multiple accounts, and all options in the table at the bottom will be disabled and not editable. However, you can still view all the configuration details to understand how the workflow is set up.
If the workflow is assigned to only the account you're currently viewing, everything will be editable. You’ll be able to configure it as needed, as shown in the image below.
There are four tabs on the *Edit Fulfillment Workflow* page:
- **Vendors:** This tab displays a table of all vendors used by the workflow.
- **Shipments: **Use this tab to manage how products are grouped into individual shipments within your workflow. From this screen, you can designate both rated and non-rated shipments, as well as select which specific shipments should automatically integrate with ShipStation to streamline your fulfillment process.
- **Settings:** This tab is where you can set the option to manually post order integration POs to vendors.
- **Products: **This tab lists all the products fulfilled by the workflow.
For more details on each tab, see [here](https://help.liftoffcommerce.com/space/KB/4056416257/Edit+a+fulfillment+workflow).
**Make changes to the workflow**
Within each fulfillment workflow, you may use an unlimited number of vendors and locations, all according to what you need for any given product. When making changes to a workflow in the *Edit* screen, you can do any of the following:
- **Add a vendor:** If your product needs to pass through more than one vendor (say, one for warehousing and another for custom embroidery), you can add all the ones you need on the *Vendors* tab. If you ever need to change or remove a vendor, you can do that, too.
- **Add or change vendor location:** If a vendor has more than one location, you're free to select as many or as few as you choose. Does your custom print vendor have locations in New York and Colorado, but you only do business with the Colorado location? Simply uncheck the New York location in that vendor's row in the table and click the *Save* button in that row.
- **Select your rating vendor:** Regardless of the number of vendors in your workflow, only one rated shipment can be created on the *Shipments* tab, and it must be sent to the customer. If your workflow includes multiple vendors, you will also have the option to create additional non-rated shipments.
For details on creating distinct shipments for multi-vendor fulfillment workflows, see our **[HOW-TO Guide](https://help.liftoffcommerce.com/space/HOWTO/4126212097/HOW-TO:+Create+distinct+shipments+for+multi-vendor+fulfillment+workflows)**.
- **Select your inventory vendor:** Clicking the radio button for a vendor row in the table on the *Vendors* tab tells Liftoff that it should use this vendor for [inventory management](https://help.liftoffcommerce.com/space/KB/2732458003) for any associated product.
- **Configure your shipment chain:** Imagine you have two vendors set up for your workflow. The first vendor stores the raw product in their warehouse. When an item is ordered, it’s shipped from their warehouse to the second vendor, who customizes the product with embroidery. Once the customization is complete, the second vendor ships the finished product to the customer.
Using the *Origin* and *Destination* dropdowns on the *Shipments *tab, you can define the "chain" of shipments each product will follow when using this fulfillment workflow. This allows you to clearly outline how each product moves through the fulfillment process.
- **Manage shipment assignments:** By utilizing the *Shipment Assignments *dropdown on the *Shipments* tab, you can select how products will be grouped in shipments. There are three options:
- *Standard assignments* (default)
- *Ship line items separately*
- *Ship units separately*
- **Provide special instructions to a vendor:** Any text in the *Instructions* box on the *Vendors* tab in a vendor's row will be transmitted to that vendor each time an associated product is ordered.
> ℹ️ **Make sure to save what you intend to save!**
> ℹ️
> ℹ️ The *Save* button to the right of each vendor name on the *Vendors *tab only saves changes made to **that vendor** in the table.
## Delete a workflow
Remember, at the account level, a fulfillment workflow can only be deleted when it is assigned to just one account **and** it has no products associated with it.
# Subscriber-level workflows
> ℹ️ **Are you in the right place?**
> ℹ️
> ℹ️ Don't forget to navigate to **Products > Fulfillment Workflows** under the *All Accounts* area of the left-hand navigation menu when you want to access subscriber-level tools.
You'll find that, when using the fulfillment workflow tools at the subscriber ("all accounts" or "global") level, much of the information above is the same. Here are some key differences when managing your workflows for all accounts at once.
## The listing table
There are two main differences between this global view and the account-level view:
1. This **global view** shows every workflow configured for the subscriber, no matter which accounts use it.
2. Each value in the *Usage* column represents the grand total of all the products using a specific workflow across all the accounts it's associated with.
Also, just like in the account-level view, a workflow can't be deleted if it’s associated with any products. That’s why, in the image above, the only workflow with an active *Delete* button is the one with 0 products in its *Usage* column.
## Create a new workflow
There are no differences between subscriber- and account-level views when creating a workflow, except one very important one: assigning a workflow to accounts.
Account assignment is a key tool when editing a workflow at the subscriber level, and the process is the same as when creating a new workflow. Now, let's dive into how to make edits to your workflow!
## Edit a workflow
Just as before, when viewing the listing table of all fulfillment workflows, clicking the blue button next to the workflow you need takes you to its view/edit screen. This time, though, the blue button says *Edit* instead of *View*.
When you get there, everything in the *Workflow* tab is the same as at the account level. Clicking the *Accounts* tab is a different thing.
This tool is fairly self-explanatory. There is one **very** important thing to know, though, and that's the key difference between the *Expose To All Accounts* checkbox and **simply checking every box** in the *Expose To Selected Accounts Only* area.
> ℹ️ **The difference: new accounts**
> ℹ️
> ℹ️ Ticking the *Expose To All Accounts* box ensures that any account you create in the future will be able to use this workflow.
> ℹ️
> ℹ️ Simply ticking all the boxes under the green *Select All* button **does not apply the workflow to future accounts.** You'd have to come back to this view and assign the workflow to any new account manually.
## Delete a workflow
As noted above, you may only delete a workflow at the subscriber level if it has no products associated with it. As long as even one product on even one account is using a given workflow, it cannot be deleted.
# Bulk assignment with batch jobs
So, you have a complex workflow all configured and ready to use, and now you need to associate it with a whole bunch of products—maybe even hundreds or thousands. No need to waste time clicking through each product one by one; do all the assigning at once with a batch job!
A discussion of the basics of [batch jobs](https://help.liftoffcommerce.com/space/KB/2734161921) appears elsewhere and won't be covered here. If you're new to using the batch jobs tool in Liftoff, we suggest you start there and return here when you're ready.
## Create and submit your batch job
To begin, navigate in My Liftoff to **Tools > Batch Jobs** and click the blue *Create Batch Job* button.
First, select the *Product Data *type from the *Select Job Type* dropdown, then click the *"Download Product Data..."* link right below. This will generate a spreadsheet you can fill out for all the products you need to update.
Remember when we mentioned the *Workflow Code* earlier in the article? This is where it comes into play!
In the batch job spreadsheet (the one titled "Workflow"), Column `AS` is where you’ll enter the workflow code. For each product you want to associate with the new workflow, just input that workflow's code in the corresponding row for that product.
> ℹ️ **One at a time, please**
> ℹ️
> ℹ️ It's best to create one batch job spreadsheet per account. Don't try to squish all products from all accounts into a single spreadsheet!
When you're done entering all the associated data you need into your spreadsheet, just finish configuring the batch job as you would any other. Submit it, wait for it to finish, and you're all done!
# Conditional Fulfillment
In order to apply conditional fulfillment (“if this, then that”) rules, you’ll need to edit the rules for individual products. The article on [editing an existing product](https://help.liftoffcommerce.com/space/KB/2732097537/Edit+an+existing+product#Conditional-fulfillment-rules) shows you how.
To enable or disable conditional fulfillment rules for an account, navigate to **Beta Features** on Liftoff.
Note that if the account has any active conditional fulfillment rules, this feature may not be disabled. To disable it, you must first remove the fulfillment rules from your account’s products.
