Help

Shop help

How to run your shop: setting it up, selling, taking money and getting orders out of the door.

First Steps

Getting Started The seven things to settle before you open, in the order that saves the most backtracking, and what can wait. Reading the Dashboard What each figure counts, what it leaves out, how to read the charts, and where to look when one seems wrong. What Your Plan Includes Which features depend on your plan, which limits apply, and why something you have read about may not appear in your admin.

Products

Adding a Product Every tab on the product form, what each field does, and the four that cause trouble later. Options and Variants Which of the two to use, every field on a variant, and the mistakes that are painful to undo. Categories Every field, nesting, visibility by group, descriptions, sort order, and what happens when you delete one. Stock and Inventory How stock is counted, selling from several locations, the rollup that surprises people, and backorders. Importing and Exporting Bulk changes by spreadsheet, what the columns mean, how rows are matched, and how to avoid overwriting good data. Brands and Tags Two ways of grouping products that are not categories, and what each is actually for. Reviews and Questions Moderating reviews, answering questions, and deciding how much to publish. Digital Products and Downloads Selling files, how delivery works, download limits, and selling a download beside a printed edition. How Listings Are Ordered Why the order you see is not the order you set, and the one setting that quietly overrides every sort in the shop.

Selling

Orders The two statuses, every action on an order, what emails the customer, and how to find one. Invoices, Packing and Labels Printing one order or a day's worth, what is on the paperwork, and buying shipping labels. Refunds and Cancellations Refunding in part or full, what happens to stock, and why refunding at the processor breaks your figures. Point of Sale Selling in person: opening a session, taking payment, the cash drawer, and how it reconciles against your online sales. Cashing Up at the Till What a drawer session counts, what it quietly does not, and the four ways the figure comes out wrong. Subscriptions Selling something billed on a cycle, the five states a subscription moves through, failed payments, and what a customer can change. Order Statuses and Tags What the built-in statuses mean, adding your own, and using tags for the orders that do not fit.

Customers

Customers Accounts and guests, why histories split, every field on a group, addresses, and what you can and cannot see. Customer Groups and Wholesale Building trade pricing, restricting what a group sees, how the best price is chosen, and the traps in a blanket percentage. Wishlists, Registries and Forms The three things customers create on your shop, and what to do with what they tell you.

Money

Taking Payments Every method, what connecting one involves, how offline orders behave, and what a failure records. Connecting Stripe and PayPal What connecting actually does, the onboarding states, what each one unlocks, and what to check before going live. Offline Payment Methods Cheques, bank transfer, purchase orders and paying in store, and how an unpaid order behaves. Markets and Currencies Selling into more than one country, and the one thing about prices that catches everybody out. Accounting Integrations QuickBooks, Xero and FreshBooks, and which of the three actually sends anything on its own.

Shipping

How Shipping Works Origins, zones, rate types and the exact order the shop resolves them in. Setting Up Carriers Connecting USPS, UPS, FedEx and the rest, what each account needs, and why your rates may look higher than expected. Shipping Integrations Sending orders to a fulfilment service, getting tracking back, and what to check when a number does not arrive.

Tax

Tax Classes, rates, how a rate is chosen, compound tax, shipping, and what the report counts. Avalara AvaTax What the connection does for you, what it does not do, and the quiet fallback that can zero your tax.

Marketing

Coupons Every field, how the discount is calculated, what restricting does, stacking, and how to tell whether a code worked. Promotions Discounts that apply without a code, how they differ from coupons, and the order several of them resolve in. Gift Certificates Selling them, issuing one by hand, how balances are spent down, and why they are not coupons. Abandoned Carts What counts as abandoned, when the reminders go, what they contain, and how to tell whether they are working. Email Templates Which emails your shop sends, what you can change in each, placeholders, and the field that can blank an email entirely. Who Your Email Comes From The address on the emails your shop sends, where a customer's reply goes, and what verifying your own domain changes. Newsletters and SMS Collecting subscribers, sending through a mailing list service, text messages, and the consent rules that matter.

Your Storefront

Themes Choosing one, what settings carry across, editing templates safely, the homepage blocks, building a page from sections, and what to check before activating. Homepage Builder Building the homepage from blocks: what is on offer, reordering, hiding, duplicating, and what happens to your arrangement when you change theme. Pages and Menus Writing the pages that are not products, building one from sections, building menus, and the pages a shop needs before it opens. The Blog Writing posts, categories, and linking posts to the products they are about. SEO and Redirects Titles and descriptions, sitemaps, robots, and sending old addresses somewhere useful. Search and Synonyms How your shop's search works, teaching it your customers' words, and reading what people looked for. Languages and Translations Running a shop in more than one language, what gets translated, and what you have to write yourself.

Reports

Which Report Answers What What each report is for, the rule that governs all of them, and why two can disagree.

Settings and Admin

Store Details and Features The settings that affect everything else, and the switches that hide features you do have. Staff and Roles Adding colleagues, what each role can do, and the account rules worth setting before you have staff. Domains Using your own web address, how the certificate is handled, and what to expect when you switch. Using Cloudflare Putting Cloudflare in front of your own domain, in the order that works, and the two settings that break it. Security Protecting the admin, screening fraudulent orders, and the content security policy. API Tokens and Webhooks Letting another system read or write your shop, and telling it when something happens. Vendors and Payouts Selling on behalf of others, what a vendor can see, and how what they are owed is worked out. Apps and Plugins Adding something the shop does not do itself, what an app can reach, and removing one cleanly.

Reselling

Reselling the Platform Running shops for your own clients under your own name, and how the commission side really works.

Getting Help

Reporting a Problem What to include so a problem can be fixed quickly, and how to follow one you have reported. Moving From Another Platform What comes across, what does not, the order to do it in, and the things that go wrong at the switch.