Setting up your shop

Shop lets you sell physical merchandise directly from your public site -- t-shirts, buttons, yard signs, anything you either ship yourself or fulfill through a print-on-demand partner. Before your first product can go live, your organization needs to connect a few accounts. This article covers that setup. For adding items to sell, see Adding and managing products. For handling what comes in, see Fulfilling shop orders. For the public page buyers shop from, see Your storefront.

Everything for your shop is in the Shop group of the Website section. Open Website in your workspace sidebar, then Shop, then Shop settings to reach the page described below. Only owners and admins can open it.

What your shop needs before it can go live

Three things have to be true before the Shop status toggle at the bottom of the settings page can be turned on:

• Your organization is verified. This is the same verification used to accept donations. If you haven't been through it yet, do that first.
• Stripe is connected with charges, payouts, and transfers all enabled. This is the same Stripe account used for your fundraising pages -- see Creating a fundraising page for how to connect it from Fundraising > Set up payments. You don't set up Stripe from the Shop settings page itself.
• ShipStation is connected (below). This is required for every shop regardless of how you fulfill orders.

If any of these is missing, the toggle is disabled and the reason is shown underneath it.

Connecting ShipStation

Orders are pushed to ShipStation for fulfillment, and marking a shipment as tracked is what releases the money held for that order into your account. Enter your ShipStation API key and API secret and select Connect ShipStation. This connection is required before you can enable the shop, even if every product you sell is print-on-demand.

Connecting a print-on-demand provider (optional)

If you don't want to hold inventory or pack boxes yourself, connect Printful or Printify (or both). Either lets you design a product with that provider and sell it without stocking anything; the order is pushed to the provider automatically when a customer pays.

• Printful: enter a Printful Private Token (created in Printful's Developer Portal; older API keys no longer work) and select Connect Printful. Give the token access to orders and to sync products; a token for one store or for all your stores both work. If the token has access to more than one store, a dropdown appears so you can choose which one to connect.
• Printify: enter your Printify API key and select Connect Printify. If the key has access to more than one Printify shop, a dropdown appears so you can choose which one to connect.

Once connected, an Import from Printful or Import from Printify button appears on the Products page -- see Adding and managing products.

If a connected key stops working (expired, revoked, etc.), the settings page shows the date the connection broke and orders will not push or track until you reconnect it with a working key.

Shipping and return policy

• Flat shipping rate: a single USD amount added to every order's total, regardless of what's in the cart.
• Ship-by window: the number of days you have to ship an order after it's paid. If an order hasn't shipped within this window, it is automatically refunded to the buyer -- so set it to something you can realistically meet.
• Return policy: optional text shown to buyers on your storefront.

Turning your shop on

Selling is not open yet. Until OrganizeOS opens it, the Shop status toggle stays off, and a note at the top of the settings page says so. In the meantime you can connect your accounts, set your shipping and return policy, and add products.

Once selling is open and verification, Stripe, and ShipStation are all in place, switch Shop status on and save. When you turn the shop on, the save checks your Stripe account again and confirms that ShipStation is connected, and tells you what to fix if either is not ready. While it's on, your active products are purchasable on your public storefront; while it's off (or before all three requirements are met), nothing on your storefront can be bought. You can switch a shop that is on back off at any time.

Why this matters

A shop that isn't fully connected fails at the worst possible moment: a supporter has already picked out a product and is trying to pay. Getting verification, Stripe, and ShipStation in place before you publish any product means the first real order goes smoothly, funds release on the schedule you promised, and nothing gets stuck waiting on a missing connection.