Skip to main contentIntroduction to fulfillments
Fulfillments in Shopify track the process of delivering items from an order to the customer. When you fulfill an order, you confirm that products have been shipped, and Shopify updates the order status accordingly. Fulfillments can be managed manually or automatically, and are essential for keeping customers informed about their order progress.
One or more fulfillments
Most orders should have just a single fulfillment containing all of the order’s items, which are shipped at once in a single physical parcel.
Sometimes however, an order may be split into multiple fulfillments for different reasons which could be:
- Some products are not in stock and the products that are in stock should be shipped now
- All products cannot fit into a single physical package and needs to be split into multiple packages
- Items are stocked at different locations and shipped separately.
Shipping fulfillments
When booking a shipment, each fulfillment represents a single physical box that needs to be shipped, and each will receive its own tracking number. If you book multiple fulfillments at the same time, they are treated as a shipment with multiple parcels—known as colli. This approach is often more cost-effective than booking each fulfillment separately, as carriers may offer discounted rates for multi-parcel shipments. 
