Overview
When one of your customers sends gifts to multiple recipients in a single shopping session, Zest's Multiship Checkout handles all the order complexity automatically — no engineering or developer involvement required on your end.
Here's how it works behind the scenes, and what you'll see in your Shopify admin.
What Is a Parent Order?
When a customer begins a multiship checkout, they start from a single checkout page — this is called the Parent Order. Think of it as the master order that:
Collects the customer's payment and payment method in one place
Holds the full cart value across all recipients
What you'll see in Shopify:
After the customer completes payment, a Parent Order is created in your Shopify admin. Shortly after, this Parent Order is automatically canceled — but importantly, no refund is issued.
This is intentional: the cancellation prevents the Parent Order from double-counting your sales totals in Shopify reports, since the actual revenue is captured through the individual Child Orders (see below).
Heads up! No action is needed from you! Zest handles the Parent Order cancellation automatically.
What Are Child Orders?
For every recipient the customer configures during checkout, Zest creates a separate Child Order in Shopify. Child Orders are created automatically when a customer completes their multiship checkout. These are the orders your fulfillment team will actually work with.
Key things to know about Child Orders:
One order per recipient
Each Child Order contains only the items going to that specific recipient, making it straightforward to pick, pack, and ship independently.Appear as paid
Child Orders show as paid in your Shopify admin, even though they don't have a separate payment method attached. Payment was already collected through the Parent Order.Ready for your normal fulfillment flow
Child Orders move through your existing fulfillment process just like any standard Shopify order.
How It All Comes Together
Here's what happens step by step when a customer checks out with multiship:
Customer builds their cart and starts a multiship checkout.
Customer configures each recipient and completes a single payment.
Zest automatically creates one Child Order per recipient in your Shopify admin.
The Parent Order is automatically canceled (no refund issued).
Your team fulfills each Child Order independently — just like a regular order.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will my sales reports be affected?
No. Because the Parent Order is canceled (without a refund) and the Child Orders capture the actual revenue, your Shopify sales reports accurately reflect your true sales.
Do I need to set anything up?
Multiship Checkout is enabled through your Zest app settings — no coding or developer involvement required. Once enabled, the Parent/Child Order logic runs automatically for every multiship transaction.
What if a customer needs a refund on a multiship order?
Refunds on Child Orders work just like refunds on standard Shopify orders. You can process them directly from your Shopify admin on the individual Child Order.
Can I see which Child Orders belong to the same multiship session?
Yes! Each Child Order includes a reference back to the originating Parent Order, making it easy to trace grouped orders when needed.
Does this affect my inventory?
No. Each Child Order reflects the actual items going to each recipient, so your inventory is tracked accurately.