Connecting ShipStation Sales to Pipe17

ShipStation is a shipping platform that assists with managing your small parcel and LTL shipping needs in one place. There are two types of ShipStation connectors in Pipe17. One for sales, and the other for fulfillment.

This article explain usage of ShipStation Sales connector.

Pipe17 supports the following order flows for the ShipStation Sales connector: 

• Pull orders from ShipStation
• Pull products from ShipStation or push product updates to ShipStation
• Push fulfillments to ShipStation
• Pull locations from ShipStation

In this Article

• Requirements
• Connecting ShipStation to Pipe17
• Configuring Connection Flows
• Configuring Other Settings
  • Order Settings
  • Fulfillment Settings
  • Product Settings
• What's Next?

Requirements

Before getting started on this guide, ensure that you have administrator/owner access to your ShipStation account. You will need these permissions to access your API Key and API Secret which is needed for the integration. 

Connecting ShipStation Sales to Pipe17

1. Login to Pipe17
2. Click the Integrations tab on the left
3. Click Add Integration in the top right corner
4. Search for ShipStation Sales
5. Click on the tile

You can provide the credentials, or click "Add without credentials" to configure credentials later.

Here is how you can get API key and API secret can both be found in your ShipStation Portal 

1. Login to ShipStation, navigate to Settings > Account > API Settings
2. Copy the API Key and API Secret values into the corresponding places in Pipe17

Add the API Key and Secret on the Connection Details tab. Add Partner Id, if applicable. Typically, you don't need to provide the partner Id.

After clicking Save, Pipe17 will attempt to connect to ShipStation. Note, this may take up to 5 minutes to connect. To confirm the connection, return to the Integrations Tab in Pipe17 and look for the green Connected status next to the ShipStation connector: 

Configuring Connection Flows

If you're using ShipStation for fulfillment purposes, and not for the sales channel, please go to the next section for ShipStation Fulfillment settings.

Pipe17 supports the following connection (order) flows to/from ShipStation Sales: 

• Orders
  • Pull orders from ShipStation: Turn this toggle ON to enable Pipe17 to pull orders from your ShipStation account. These orders will be listed within the Orders > All Orders page in Pipe17
• Products
  • Pull products from ShipStation: Turn this toggle ON to enable Pipe17 to pull products from your ShipStation catalog. These products will be listed within the Products > All Products page in Pipe17.
  • Push products from Pipe17 to ShipStation: Turn this toggle ON to enable Pipe17 to push updates ONLY to products in your ShipStation catalog. These products will be listed within the Products > All Products page in Pipe17.
  • Disabled: Select this if you do not want to pull or push products.
• Fulfillments
  • Push fulfillments to ShipStation: Turn this toggle ON to enable Pipe17 to push fulfillment data (including tracking number) for orders pulled from ShipStation.
• Locations
  • Pull locations from ShipStation: Turned on by default. 

ShipStation Sales Settings

There are additional settings for the ShipStation Sales connector that can be used to control the behavior of each entity flow to/from ShipStation. These settings can be found in a section called "ShipStation Sales Settings" underneath the "Connection Flow" section we went over previously.

You will notice settings for Orders, Fulfillments and Products. Let's review them in detail!

Orders Settings

• Exclude orders created before this date: Orders created before this date will not be ingested by the connector. The default is the create date of the integration.
• Process only orders with specific order IDs: Only specified order IDs will be ingested. Very useful for limited testing.

NOTE: Once you use this setting and pull specific orders, the internal checkpoint moves forward. If you want to pull older orders, you will have to reach out to Pipe17 support to reset the checkpoint. 

• Pull orders from ShipStation only when associated with specific warehouse name(s): Orders associated to specified warehouse will be pulled, others ignored.

If you want to pull only orders with certain tag, use the following 2 settings in conjunction.

• Pull orders from ShipStation only when order assigned specific tag: Specify the tag name or tag ID to look for when pulling orders.
• After pulling order from ShipStation by specific tag, assign tag below to mark processed orders: Specify ShipStation tag name or tag id. This tag will be added to ShipStation order once order is pulled to Pipe17.

Order ingestion via tagging works this way:

• Tags in ShipStation are separate objects. One has to separately create these tags before they can be used anywhere in ShipStation.
• Make sure the two tags used in the above setting are already created in ShipStation. Pipe17 cannot create any tag via API, it can only use already created tags.
• User or automation can apply a specific tag for Pipe17 to look for orders that are eligible for ingestion.
• ShipStation does not have search/list API by tags. So Pipe17 has to look scan all orders.
• To avoid continuously fetching same order, Pipe17 uses the 2nd tag to indicate already processed orders.

• Mark ShipStation order as pending: Toggle this setting ON if you would like ShipStation to move the order to Pending status once. You have 3 options on when Pipe17 should mark the order pending in ShipStation:
  • Disabled - do not use this feature
  • When order is pulled into Pipe17 - mark order pending as soon as order is pulled into Pipe17
  • When order is sent to fulfillment in Pipe17 - mark order pending when it is sent for fulfillment from Pipe17

• Mark order as 'on hold' in Pipe17 when the order is 'on hold' in ShipStation: Toggle this setting ON if you would like Pipe17 to mark order as on-hold in ShipStation when it is put on hold in Pipe17. 
• Cancel order in Pipe17 when cancelled in ShipStation: Toggle this setting ON if you would like Pipe17 to cancel order in Pipe17 when it is cancelled in ShipStation. 
• Cancel order in ShipStation when cancelled in Pipe17: Toggle this setting ON if you would like Pipe17 to cancel order in ShipStation when it is cancelled in Pipe17.

Fulfillment Settings

• Mark order shipped in ShipStation only when fully shipped in Pipe17: Toggle this setting ON if you would like Pipe17 to mark order as shipped in ShipStation only after it is fully fulfilled in Pipe17, as opposed to marking order shipped on receipt of the first fulfillment.

• When marking order shipped, allow ShipStation to send shipping confirmation to customer: Toggle this setting ON if you would like Pipe17 to set the flag that indicates ShipStation to notify customer on shipment.

• When marking order shipped, allow ShipStation to send shipping confirmation to marketplace: Toggle this setting ON if you would like Pipe17 to set the flag that indicates ShipStation to notify the marketplace on shipment. This is used in case orders from other marketplaces, such as Amazon, are synched into ShipStation.

• Do not resolve carrier supplied by fulfillment channel against carriers registered in ShipStation: Toggle this setting ON if you would like Pipe17 to skip resolving (best effort matching) the shipping method received from the 3PL / fulfillment channel, to ones registered in ShipStation. If turned OFF, Pipe17 will take carrier code as mapped for fulfillments out and will attempt to normalize carrier code to best match observed at ShipStation.

Product Settings

• Process only products with specific product SKUs patterns: Add one or more SKU values or regular expression to indicate the product (i.e. SKUs) to sync with ShipStation. Since the connector support both pull and push, this setting works for both option. Meaning, if product pull is enabled, Pipe17 will only pull products with matching SKUs to this list when pulling them into Pipe17. Similarly, if product push is enabled, Pipe17 will only push products with matching SKUs in Pipe17 to this list when pushing them into ShipStation.
• Do not process process products with specific SKUs patterns: This is the inverse list of above. Pipe17 will ignore SKUs mentioned in this list. The setting applies to both pulling and pushing products.

NOTE:

• A string wrapped around two "/" is considered as regex, else a exact but case-insensitive match.
• Ex: /^ABC*/ is considered a regex, and will match all SKUs starting with 'ABC'
• While ABC is used for exact match, and will match with following SKUs - ABC, abc, Abc, aBc, abC, etc.

• When ShipStation fulfillment SKU is different from product SKU, create bundle in Pipe17: This setting is for backward compatibility. In case, ShipStation has 2 SKUs - Product SKU & Fulfillment SKU, in that case when pulling such product we create a bundle that has selling SKU and component that has fulfillment SKU, so that upon sending to the fulfillment channel this would expand appropriately in Pipe17. This is deprecated, it only exists for very old customers not using SKU Mapping in Pipe17. 
  • PLEASE do NOT use this functionality, instead use SKU Mapping feature of the product. 
• Force product catalog resync: Toggle this ON to re-ingest products into Pipe17. Triggers a full Product Catalog resync. This switch will automatically turn off once sync is complete.

What's Next?

Congrats! You've connected ShipStation to your Pipe17 account, and you're now ready to begin testing! Check out our Pipe17 Quick Start Guide for some helpful context on testing and other subjects.