The order path

Shopify describes dropshipping fulfillment as a chain. The customer pays on your store. The order details go to the supplier. The supplier picks, packs, and ships to the customer’s address. Your store name can stay on the experience. The stock never has to sit with you.

You remain the person who answers the customer and who passes on tracking. If a parcel is late, the customer writes to the store. You then write to the supplier. That split is the job, and it is written on Shopify’s dropshipping page.

Where the product is stocked

When you add or edit a product, Shopify asks where inventory will be stocked. For a dropshipped item, choose the fulfillment app or the custom fulfillment service that will ship it. A custom service receives an email when you mark the item fulfilled. An app may mark the item fulfilled itself when it ships, or it may wait until you place the supplier order inside the app. Read that app’s own note. Shopify says the two workflows both exist.

Shopify also says the store uses manual fulfillment by default, and that this setting applies across fulfillment methods. Leave it manual until you have watched one real order go out. The supplier checks before that order are on How to Choose a Shopify Dropshipping Supplier.

The rate the customer sees

Checkout needs a shipping rate as well as a payment method. Add the rate under Shipping and delivery for the places you actually ship. Shopify’s product guide says showing the shipping cost in the cart lets the customer decide with the full number on screen.

In Pakistan the payment method is the one in Shopify Payments in Pakistan: a third-party provider the admin shows, or a manual method. The store setup that puts both in place is How to Create a Shopify Store, and Lecture 1 is How to Setup a Store.

A delivery time you have measured

Shopify’s supplier article gives a shipping example inside the United States: a coast-to-coast trip can take nearly a week, and a central warehouse can land many orders in 2 or 3 days. That example is about the United States. It is not a delivery promise for a customer in Pakistan.

Place a test order to an address in Pakistan. Count the days until it arrives, and look at the packing. Put that number on the product page. Change it when a later order takes a different number of days.

The gaming shop on this website is a separate checkout. Paid orders there have free delivery. A Shopify dropshipping store uses the rate you entered, which can be free only when your price already covers the supplier’s shipping.

Frequently asked questions

One test order, then the public promise

Set the product’s fulfillment location, ship one parcel to yourself, and publish the delivery time that parcel took.