The customer asking after ten days
A customer messages to ask where their order is. You look in your shop: paid, unfulfilled. You look at the print partner: nothing. The order never arrived there. The product was a new colour you added on the marketplace, and the variant was never linked to the partner's product, so the integration skipped it without telling anyone.
Once you look, you find more. An order stuck because the partner account card had expired. Two held because an address was missing a house number. One in draft because a file failed to upload. None of them caused an alert.
Integrations fail quietly
Partner integrations are built for the normal case. When an order does not fit, the result is often a draft, a hold or nothing at all, visible only if you look in the right place.
- Variants added on a channel but not linked to a partner product are skipped.
- Orders with address problems are held as drafts at the partner.
- The partner account's payment method fails, and orders wait unpaid.
- Files that failed to upload leave orders unsubmitted.
- A sync or connection is paused after an error or a password change.
Each cause is minor. Together, they leave a steady trickle of paid orders that nobody is making.
What stuck orders cost
Every stuck order is a customer waiting for something that has not started. By the time they ask, the order is late. On marketplaces, late dispatch counts against you, and a cancelled order counts more. Refunds for orders that were never made are money you took and gave back with nothing to show for it, except a disappointed customer and possibly a bad review.
The time spent investigating is high because each cause lives in a different screen.
The order check we build
- Every paid order from your shop and marketplaces is pulled into one list as it arrives.
- For each order, the check confirms with each partner's API that it was received, submitted and paid, within a time you set.
- Orders that have not reached that point are listed with the likely reason: unlinked variant, missing file, address problem, payment hold or connection error.
- Common causes are fixed where it is safe: an address with a known correction is sent to the customer to confirm, an unlinked variant is linked using the catalogue mapping, a failed file is re-sent.
- You get a short daily message listing anything still stuck, and a message straight away if a connection stops altogether.
- Each stuck order's history is kept, so repeated causes show up and can be fixed at the source.
| Cause | How it is spotted | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Unlinked variant | Order line has no partner product | Linked from the catalogue, then submitted |
| Address problem | Partner holds the order as draft | Customer asked to confirm |
| Partner payment failed | Order submitted but unpaid | Alert to update the card |
| File failed | Order in draft without print file | File re-sent from the library |
| Connection paused | No orders reaching the partner | Immediate alert |
Anything the check cannot fix safely stays with you, with the reason written out so you do not have to investigate from scratch.
Paid orders that always get made
Every morning you get a short list: usually nothing, sometimes an address to confirm or a variant to link. When a partner's connection drops, you know within the hour, not when customers start asking. Orders stop going missing between the shop and the print partner.
Over time, the history shows the causes, such as colours added on Etsy without linking, so you can change the habit that causes them.
Signs orders are slipping through
- Customers ask about orders the partner has never seen.
- You find paid, unfulfilled orders when you happen to look.
- Orders have sat as drafts at your partner.
- The partner account's card has expired without you noticing.
- You only find out a sync stopped when orders dry up.