How to add a tracking number to Shopify by hand, and at scale.

Add a tracking number while fulfilling an order

This is the normal path: the order is sitting unfulfilled, your shipment is on its way, and you want to stamp the tracking on it so the customer gets notified. From the Shopify admin:

1. 1

   Go to Orders and open the order

   Click Orders in the left nav, then click the order number you want to fulfill.

2. 2

   Click Mark as fulfilled

   In the Unfulfilled card near the top of the order, click Mark as fulfilled.

3. 3

   Enter the tracking number

   Paste the number into the Tracking number field. Shopify often auto-detects the carrier from the number’s format and fills it in for you.

4. 4

   Pick the shipping carrier if it’s wrong

   If the auto-detected Shipping carrier doesn’t match, choose the right one from the dropdown so the tracking link points to the correct carrier site.

5. 5

   Save

   Click Save. The order is marked fulfilled and the customer gets a shipping notification email with the tracking link, assuming the notify-customer option stayed on.

Add tracking to an order you already fulfilled

Sometimes you fulfill first and the tracking number lands in your inbox an hour later. You don’t have to un-fulfill anything. You can attach tracking to a fulfillment that already exists.

1. 1

   Open the fulfilled order

   Go to Orders and open the order that’s already marked Fulfilled.

2. 2

   Click Add tracking

   In the fulfilled shipment card, click Add tracking (or Edit tracking if a placeholder is already there).

3. 3

   Enter the number and carrier, then Save

   Add the tracking number, confirm the carrier, and Save. Keep notify-customer on if you want Shopify to send the updated tracking to the buyer.

Split shipments: more than one tracking number

When an order ships in two boxes (two suppliers, a backorder, or just a bulky item that goes separately), one tracking number isn’t enough. Add a separate fulfillment for each shipment.

When you click Mark as fulfilled, choose only the line items that are in this box, add that box’s tracking number, and save. Repeat for the next shipment with its own number. Each fulfillment carries its own tracking, so every item shows the right status in the Shop app and the customer can follow each parcel independently instead of staring at one link that only covers half their order.

This is fine for a few orders a day

Everything above works great when you’re fulfilling a handful of orders. It falls apart the moment your tracking numbers arrive as supplier dispatch emails: the “your order has shipped” messages from YunExpress, 4PX, your dropship supplier, or your 3PL.

Then the real workflow looks like this:

• Open the supplier email, find the tracking number buried in the body or a PDF shipping label.
• Figure out which Shopify order it belongs to, often by matching a SKU or a customer name.
• Switch tabs, find that order, click Mark as fulfilled, paste, pick the carrier, save.
• Repeat. For every shipment. Every day.

It’s slow and error-prone (one transposed digit and the customer tracks someone else’s parcel), and there’s a lag between when the supplier shipped and when your customer actually finds out. If you hand it to a VA, you’ve traded the typing for a 12-hour delay and a new kind of mistake. The manual admin was never built to be a high-volume data-entry pipe between two inboxes.

If your tracking lives in your email, you’re not really fulfilling orders — you’re transcribing emails into Shopify by hand.

The automated way

This is the gap Relayship fills. You forward your supplier dispatch emails to one address and we add the tracking to the right order for you. No copy-paste, no tab-switching, and no waiting on a VA to catch up.

Concretely:

• You set a Gmail or Outlook filter to auto-forward supplier shipping emails to one unique Relayship address.
• Relayship reads the tracking number, carrier, order reference, SKUs, and address out of the email body, HTML, or even a PDF shipping label.
• A match cascade finds the right Shopify order (order reference first, then customer and SKU, then name and address) and calls fulfillmentCreateV2 with the correct line items and tracking. Shopify notifies the customer, usually in under about 60 seconds from the dispatch email landing.
• One email with several tracking numbers becomes several independently-matched shipments, so split and batch shipments just work instead of breaking your flow.

Anything it isn’t sure about goes to a human confirmation queue instead of guessing. New installs start in review mode with auto-fulfill off until you’ve confirmed your first real matches. It needs zero cooperation from your supplier: no portal to log into, no CSV to export, no feed to set up. They keep sending the same email they always have.

If you’re only doing a few orders a day, honestly, keep doing it by hand. The steps at the top of this page are all you need. The automation earns its keep once tracking emails are a daily chore. For the full picture, see how to automate tracking from multiple suppliers.

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