Submitting your Concierge orders is the final step that sends everything to your ecommerce platform for fulfillment. This article walks you through everything you need to know, from prerequisites to post-submission workflows, so you can submit with confidence.
Overview: How Order Submission Works
When you are ready to fulfill a Concierge project, you manually submit your orders to push them into your ecommerce platform (such as Shopify). Zest creates individual Child Orders (one per recipient) from a Parent Order, each with the full details needed for fulfillment — shipping information, gift messages, scheduled ship dates, and more.
Nothing submits automatically. You stay in control of when orders move to fulfillment, giving you a final checkpoint to review every detail before anything ships.
The most important concept to understand: Payment and order submission are two completely separate actions. Paying an invoice does not push orders to your ecommerce platform — you must always click Submit Order for Processing yourself.
Prerequisites Before Submitting
Before submitting, make sure the following are in place:
Shipping profile or method assigned. Every order must have a shipping profile (flat rate or standard) or a specific shipping method selected. If neither is set, you will see a "Please select shipping options" error at submission.
All products are active. All products in the order must be in Active status in Shopify. Draft or archived products will prevent submission.
Recipients and addresses added. At least one recipient must be added, and all addresses must pass validation. Orders with missing or incomplete address data cannot be submitted.
Address validation is complete. If address validation is still processing, wait for it to finish before submitting.
Scheduled date is in the future (if applicable). If your order has a scheduled ship date, it must be set to a future date.
All required customizations are filled in. If products require customizations, those must be completed before submission.
Pre-purchase with deferred address collection: Zest does not natively support a holding state where customers pay upfront and addresses are collected weeks later. Addresses must be fully added and validated before you can submit an order. If your workflow requires deferred address collection, reach out to Zest support to discuss options.
Step-by-Step: Submitting an Order for Processing
Submitting a single order
Navigate to your Concierge project.
Locate the draft order you want to submit.
Review all details to confirm everything is finalized.
Click Submit Order for Processing.
Zest validates the order (addresses, shipping, products) and pushes it to your ecommerce platform.
This is the blast-off moment! Once you click Submit, the order is pushed to Shopify and cannot be edited in Zest. Always verify all addresses, products, quantities, tags, and gift messages before you click.
What cannot be changed after submission
Recipient addresses
Product selections and quantities
Gift messages
Order tags
Shipping method
If you need to make changes after submission, you must cancel the orders in your ecommerce platform (and in Zest) and recreate them from scratch.
Payment vs. Submission: Understanding the Separation
As mentioned, order submission and payment are two separate actions. Let's walk through it.
Action | What triggers it | What it does |
Invoice payment | Your customer pays via Stripe | Updates the invoice status to "Paid" and sends you an email notification |
Order submission | You click Submit Order for Processing | Pushes Child Orders to your ecommerce platform for fulfillment |
These are completely independent. Receiving payment does not push orders anywhere. You must always manually submit.
Why is this intentional? The separation gives you a final review checkpoint before fulfillment begins — especially important for large recipient lists, orders with future ship dates, or projects with custom packaging requirements.
Submitting Before vs. After Payment
Most brands wait until the invoice is marked Paid before submitting — this is the recommended workflow. However, Zest gives you the flexibility to submit before payment if your business needs it.
Common scenarios for submitting before payment:
Trusted clients on net terms.
Deposit arrangements where you have collected a partial payment.
Time-sensitive orders where fulfillment must begin while payment is still processing.
Important: Orders submitted to Shopify always appear with a "Paid" financial status, regardless of whether you have actually collected full payment. If you submit before payment is received, make sure to track outstanding balances in your own accounting system.
Batch and Multi-Order Submission
Submit All
Zest includes a Submit All button that submits all eligible draft orders in your Concierge project at once. All drafts are submitted in parallel, so the time to process is roughly the same whether you are submitting 5 or 50 orders.
Note: The Submit All button is available when your project has a paid invoice (or when all orders are zero-dollar). Orders that have already been submitted are automatically excluded.
Scheduled Ship Dates and Held Orders
How scheduled orders work
When you submit an order with a future ship date, Zest holds it and pushes it to your ecommerce platform automatically on the scheduled date. You do not need to do anything else after submitting — the scheduled push is handled for you.
If a Concierge project has Child Orders with different scheduled dates, each order will push to your ecommerce platform individually on its respective scheduled date.
Submitting early
You can submit orders before their scheduled ship date. They will be held in Zest and pushed to your ecommerce platform on the correct date, with all scheduled-date metadata intact.
Releasing held orders early
If you need to push a held order before its scheduled ship date, contact Zest support. The team can manually trigger the push, typically within a few hours.
What Happens in Shopify After Submission
When you submit an order, Zest creates individual Child Orders in Shopify with:
Full shipping and billing address for each recipient.
All line items (products, quantities, and variants).
Shipping line with method and cost.
Gift message (if included).
Scheduled ship date.
Tax lines and any applicable discounts.
Order tags, including any custom tags configured in your project settings.
Custom attributes such as scheduled date and gift sender information.
Financial status: Paid.
Orders appear in Shopify like any other order and are ready for normal fulfillment — shipping labels, tracking, and all standard Shopify workflows work as expected. Order numbers sync between Zest and Shopify so you can cross-reference easily.
Processing pickup orders
If a recipient is picking up their order rather than receiving it via shipping:
Set the shipping method to Pickup with a $0 (or a nominal $1) fee.
Submit the order normally.
When fulfilling in Shopify, enter pickup as the tracking number.
This marks the order as fulfilled in both Shopify and Zest without generating a shipping label.
Handling Failed Orders and Retries
Automatic retries
If one or more Child Orders fail to push to your ecommerce platform during submission, Zest will automatically retry them. Common causes of transient failures include:
Shopify rate limiting — Zest waits briefly and retries.
Temporary Shopify API errors — retried automatically.
Duplicate order detection — retried after a longer delay.
Out-of-stock products
If a failed order was caused by an out-of-stock product in Shopify, the automatic retry may succeed once inventory is replenished.
Manual resolution
If automatic retries do not resolve the issue:
Cancel the failed Child Orders (and any successfully submitted ones) in Shopify and in Zest.
Recreate the order in Zest.
Submit again.
This ensures all Child Orders for a project are pushed together cleanly.
Troubleshooting Common Concierge Order Submission Errors
Error or issue | Likely cause | What to do |
"Please select shipping options." | No shipping profile or shipping method is assigned. | Assign a flat rate method or a shipping profile before submitting. |
"Products must be added prior to submitting the order." | The order has no products. | Add at least one product. |
"Please enter at least one recipient before submitting the order." | No recipients added. | Add recipients and validate their addresses. |
"Please wait for address validation to complete..." | Address validation is still in progress. | Wait a moment, then try again. |
"Some of your recipients are missing data..." | One or more recipients have incomplete address information. | Resolve the missing data in the recipient list. |
"Scheduled date must be in the future." | Scheduled ship date is today or in the past. | Update the scheduled ship date to a future date. |
Order with $0 shipping fails to submit | This was a known historical bug that has been resolved. | If you encounter this, contact Zest support. |
Shopify product in draft or inactive status | The product in the order is not active in Shopify. | Set all products to Active in Shopify before submitting. |
Bulk submission errors on large batches | Very large order sets submitted through the UI may hit limits. | Contact Zest support to run a backend bulk submission script. |
Shipped order counts not updating in dashboard | A display sync issue, not a submission failure — orders are still fulfilled. | Report the discrepancy to Zest support. |