Frequently asked questions

Shopify admin › Apps › Lodsted. Your Shopify staff login is your Lodsted login. Each Lodsted screen is listed in Shopify's left-hand app menu.

Browsers do not let a page inside the Shopify frame talk to a USB scale or a local label printer. The pack station therefore opens as its own tab, signed in automatically. Everything else stays inside Shopify. See Pack station.

Those are Admin-only. Ask an Admin or the Owner to raise your level on the Team page. Stock adjustments, the Sync Inventory button and deleting purchase orders are Admin actions too.

Staff appear after they first open Lodsted from the Shopify admin. Have them open it once, then edit their row to set name, email and level.

Without a plan Lodsted is read-only. Settings › Billing or the banner link opens the plan page; every plan starts with a 14-day full-access free trial, approved on Shopify.

Shopify normally tells Lodsted within seconds. The scheduled sync is the safety net: every 15 minutes while orders are arriving, stretching to every 4 hours when the store is quiet. Click Sync in the title bar to run one now. Orders that are already fulfilled or canceled in Shopify are not pulled as open orders. On a fresh install the first sync pulls every open order in the store, whatever its date.

Downloaded (waiting for a wave), In Wave, Printed, Shipped, Complete, Cancelled, On Hold. The full table is on How an order flows.

When Lodsted last checked, at least one line had less available stock than the order and the older orders ahead of it needed, counting only active locations and subtracting stock allocated to waves. Lodsted tags the order backordered here and in Shopify. The tag is permanent: receiving stock makes the order waveable again, but the tag stays as a record until the order ships, and the order stays under the Backordered chip. See Backorders.

Either someone clicked the hold button on the Orders page, someone removed it from a wave, Shopify has a fulfillment hold on it (the order carries the tag shopify-hold), or its ship-to address cannot go on a domestic US label (tag ship-to-hold: outside the US, a US territory, a military APO/FPO address, or no zip). Manual holds are released with Restore; Shopify holds release when the store releases them; a ship-to hold releases when the address is corrected in Shopify, or with Restore. See Ship-to address holds.

Cancel or fully refund it in Shopify. Lodsted marks it Cancelled on the next sync. Lodsted does not cancel orders at the store itself.

The customer or a staff member changed the address, shipping method, totals or lines in Shopify after the order was already In Wave or Printed. Orders in those statuses are frozen: Lodsted does not apply the change. It records the differences in the order's Activity tab, emails the Shipping alert addresses, and the pack station shows the current lines and asks for a confirmation before buying the label. Someone must decide: ship as is, or remove the order from the wave and let the next wave take it. See Changes after waving.

Yes. Every tag on the Shopify order arrives with it and shows in the Tags column. Search by the tag on the Orders page, build a wave definition that selects "Order tag has …" to pick those orders together, and read it on the packing slip. Lodsted's own tags (printed, the wave and bin, backordered) go the other way, back to Shopify. See Tags.

The Orders search takes an order number, a customer name, a tag or a store. Prefixes narrow it: #1234 for the Lodsted order id, W317 for a wave, ~SKU for orders containing a SKU.

Two boxes, one shipment: scan the same shipment id twice at the pack station; both tracking numbers go to Shopify. Two shipments at different times: tag the order split, and waves may take it in parts.

A batch of orders picked in one walk through the warehouse. Each order gets a numbered cart bin. See Waves and picking.

As many as the wave definition's cart size, up to 250. The size is set on the definition and never changes on its own; Lodsted does not shrink a wave because of what is on it. Set each definition's cart size to the cart that type of order is picked into: a smaller number for a bulky-item wave, a larger one for small items.

Definitions are tried in the order they are listed on the definitions page, and an order belongs to the first one that matches it. Within a definition, orders are taken oldest first. Stock is reserved when a wave is created, so run the definition buttons left to right, top of the list first, and the priority you set is the priority the stock follows. See Order matters, twice.

In order of likelihood: not enough available stock for every line; a higher-priority definition claimed it first; it is On Hold; the definition's rule does not match it; or the wave limit you set was reached. The preview before creating marks short orders with a warning triangle.

Pick bins did not have enough for the wave, but bulk did. Lodsted moved the stock in the system and printed a list of what to carry. Do the physical move before picking. The wave still prints and picks from the pick bins.

Reset cancels the wave: all its orders go back to Downloaded and their stock is released, so a later wave can take them. Complete (printed waves only) closes a wave whose remaining orders are not going to ship from it; stock for unshipped lines is released and those orders are closed out or, for split orders, returned to Downloaded.

Yes. Click Print again. Only the first print changes order status and tags.

Expand the wave (or open the order) and click Remove from wave. The order goes to On Hold, its stock is released. Restore it to let a later wave take it. Removing the last order cancels the wave.

On hand is what is physically there. Allocated is reserved for active or printed waves. Available is the difference, counting only active locations. Unavail is stock sitting in inactive locations.

It is a SKU's home pick bin in zone 01. Waves pick from it first, replenishment refills it, receiving offers it with one click. One primary per SKU. See Locations.

Active means usable, inactive means not usable. An inactive location's stock is not available, is not allocated to waves, is not offered as replenishment and shows as Unavail. Use it for a receiving bin where deliveries wait to be put away, a damaged shelf, quarantine, or a bin you are counting. The stock and its history stay, and making it active again releases it. Inactive stock is not counted in what Shopify is sent, so do not set 90REC inactive while the opening count is still in it: that would send Shopify zeros. See Locations.

Open the SKU on the Inventory page, type the adjustment against the location row, choose a reason, apply. Adjustments need an Admin. Bulk Adjust does many at once. Every adjustment writes a transaction with your name.

Open the SKU on the Inventory page, type the destination location and quantity on the row, click Complete Move. Only available (unallocated) stock moves; cost layers travel with it.

Shopify's inventory tracking is off for that product. Lodsted still picks and ships it but cannot send a count. Switch tracking on under Setup › Products and stock tracking. The SKU shows a hint badge on the Inventory page until then.

After each sync, throttled per store, and when an Admin clicks Sync Inventory. The count sent is on hand minus open demand, never below zero. Non-shippable products are not pushed.

Max is the bin's capacity; replenishment fills to it. Min is a warning level; rows at or below Min show red on the Replenishment page. See Replenishment.

Lodsted counts your Shopify stock into the receiving location 90REC at install. Then two spreadsheet imports, both Admin: Locations › Import (location, sku, min, max, active; the zone comes from the code) and Inventory › Import (sku, location, quantity, cost, received date, po), which moves each row's quantity out of 90REC to its bin and receives only what Shopify did not know about. A file with any bad line applies nothing and lists what to fix. Column layouts and examples are on Importing locations and stock.

That is the opening count: at install Lodsted received every tracked product's Shopify quantity into the receiving location, so it starts out holding what Shopify had. Put it away with Inventory › Import, one row per SKU and bin; whatever is left in 90REC afterwards is the difference between Shopify's count and the shelves. See the opening count.

Open the SKU on the Inventory page and enter a positive adjustment against the location (a blank row at the bottom lets you add a location that has none yet), with a reason. For anything you paid for, create a purchase order instead so the cost is recorded. For many lines at once, with cost and date, use the Inventory page's Import.

The receiving bin every install carries. The receive screen's S button fills it in. Make it inactive if deliveries should wait there, unsellable, until they are moved to a shelf.

One line per SKU: SKU, quantity, cost with an optional fourth column for the expected date. Tabs from a spreadsheet work too. See Purchase orders.

A line may be received up to twice its ordered quantity; more than that is refused as a probable typo. Add a line to the PO for the extra, or receive the extra as an adjustment.

The order id, or the order id plus a shipment number: 12891-1. It is the barcode on the packing slip and what you scan at the pack station.

Shipments are processed during the next sync (which skips shipments created in the last 15 minutes) or when someone clicks Process Shipments. Until then the shipment shows as Pending. See Shipments.

Stock was deducted and the order is Shipped in Lodsted, but Shopify rejected the fulfillment. Read the note on the row (hover it), fix the cause in Shopify, then Re-push. After three rejections Lodsted stops trying and marks it Abandoned until you re-push or dismiss.

Weight comes from the product in Shopify with the product sync; fix it there. It matters for Shopify Shipping labels, which are rated from it. Dimensions are entered in Lodsted for now, because Shopify does not expose package dimensions to apps; a future version will sync them. Today only the height is used, for the pack station's First Class envelope promotion. See Products and kits.

USPS and UPS through a Stamps.com (Endicia) account, and Shopify Shipping for Shopify orders. Set the Stamps.com account under Settings › Carrier accounts.

Pack station › Recent / Refund › Refund on the row. A Shopify Shipping label is voided in the Shopify admin instead.

It creates one SCAN form per ship type for today's USPS labels so the driver scans one barcode. It only includes labels whose ship date is today; after you run it the ship date advances to the next business day.

The printer profile's DPI does not match the printer. Edit it under Manage printers on the pack station and set 203 or 300 to match the hardware.

Set Warehouse Time Zone under Settings › Company. It drives PO numbers, ship dates, "today" on the dashboard and every date in the tables.

Three categories under Settings › Alert Emails: Admin (allocation drift, system issues), Shipping (failed or unverified fulfillment pushes, carrier mapping failures) and Inventory (shortfalls at ship time). Each row holds a comma-separated list of addresses.

Days the warehouse is closed. They feed the handling time Lodsted reports and the next-business-day logic. Weekends are always closed.

Settings › Features › Pack station. When off, the menu entry disappears; shipments can still be added by hand or imported.