How to Use Shopify Tags to Power Smarter Fulfillment

Shopify tags can be a powerful way to communicate directly with your fulfillment provider. When used thoughtfully, they enable automation, reduce manual work, and ensure special handling needs are met. Here’s a look at how tags work—and how you can use them to streamline your operations with Handled.

What Are Shopify Tags?

Tags in Shopify are simple labels you can attach to products, orders, customers, or transfers. They’re often used for categorization or filtering, but they can also act as signals to trigger specific workflows—especially when integrated with a 3PL or warehouse management system.

Tags are completely customizable, which makes them a flexible way to communicate business rules, special instructions, or exception handling directly through your Shopify store.

How Tags Can Be Used with Your Fulfillment House

Handled works with our clients to map custom tags to specific fulfillment actions. This gives you the ability to define business logic once—and let our systems do the rest.

Here are a few examples of how Shopify tags can drive automated workflows:

• Expedite: Moves the order to the top of the queue for prioritiy processing
• Include Marketing Insert A: Adds a predefined marketing insert to the package
• Include Marketing Insert B: Adds a different marketing insert to the package
• Fragile: Triggers additional care and protective packaging
• Add Parcel Insurance: Adds insurance to the parcel before shipment
• Hold for 12 Hours: Automatically holds the order for 12 hours before processing
• Add Custom Packing Slip: Includes a custom packing slip—often used for B2B orders requiring special paperwork
• Do Not Split: Ensures the order is shipped from a single location, even if it causes a delay
• Split Order: Allows the order to ship from multiple warehouses for faster delivery

Tagging Best Practices

Not every workflow requires a tag. For example:

• Fragile SKUs can be handled at the product level.
• Order holds can be managed directly within Shopify’s admin panel.

However, tags are especially useful when:

• You need to override a default behavior for just a subset of orders.
• Your marketing or ops teams want to apply rules without editing code.
• You’re using Shopify Flow to apply tags automatically based on customer type, product, or order contents.

At Handled, we work with our clients to implement automation rules tied to these tags—ensuring that your fulfillment is aligned with your business goals and doesn’t require ongoing manual input from your team.

Power Your Fulfillment with Automation

Whether you’re running a subscription box, B2B orders, or a fast-moving beauty brand, we can help you turn Shopify tags into operational efficiency.

Want help setting up tags or mapping them to fulfillment rules?
Contact us and let’s get started.