How to add or edit a tracking number on a Shopify order

Add a tracking number while you fulfill the order

This is the usual route when you already have the courier's number in hand. The steps below follow the Shopify Help Center as of October 2026; the mobile app has the same flow and also lets you scan the barcode on the label into the tracking field.

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Orders and open the order.
2. In the Unfulfilled (or In progress) section, click Mark as fulfilled.
3. If you are shipping only part of the order, enter the quantity of each item in this package. The rest stays unfulfilled.
4. Type the number from your courier in the Tracking number field. Shopify may recognise the format and pick the carrier for you.
5. If no carrier is picked, or the wrong one is, choose it from the Shipping carrier drop-down.
6. Leave Send a notification to the customer selected if you want Shopify to email the shipping confirmation. The option only appears when the customer has an email address.
7. Click Mark as fulfilled.

• Shopify Help Center: Fulfilling your own orders individually

Add or edit tracking after the order is fulfilled

Many stores mark orders as fulfilled when the parcel leaves and get the tracking number from the courier later the same day. Shopify lets you add it afterwards.

• You cannot add a tracking number to an order that has no shipping address, which is why local pickup orders have no tracking field to fill.
• Each fulfillment has its own tracking. If parcels go with two different carriers, fulfill them as two fulfillments (or use Split fulfillment) rather than adding mixed numbers to one.

1. Open the order from Orders.
2. To add tracking for the first time: in the Fulfilled section, click Add tracking.
3. To change a tracking number that is already there: in the same fulfilled section, open the three-dot menu and click Edit tracking.
4. Enter the tracking number and confirm or change the shipping carrier. Use Add another tracking number if the shipment has several parcels; all numbers on one fulfillment must come from the same carrier.
5. Keep the notification checkbox selected to email the customer a shipping update, or clear it to save silently. Shopify's pages label this checkbox slightly differently (Send a notification to the customer, or Send notification email to customer), but it does the same thing.
6. Click Save.

• Shopify Help Center: Add tracking numbers to orders

Carriers Shopify recognises vs the Other carrier

The carrier decides whether the customer gets a working tracking link. Shopify recognises tracking numbers from hundreds of carriers, including DHL, UPS, FedEx, Canada Post and Australia Post, and builds the link to the carrier's tracking page for you. Many local couriers, especially cash-on-delivery companies, are not on that list.

If your courier gives you a tracking page per parcel, always paste that URL when you use Other. It is the difference between a customer tapping a link and a customer messaging you to ask where the parcel is.

• Shopify Help Center: Order tracking

When tracking is added later by an app or after bulk fulfillment

The common thread: in all of these cases the fulfillment exists first and the tracking arrives later. That timing matters for the messages your customer receives, both from Shopify and on WhatsApp.

• Bulk fulfillment: when you select several orders and mark them as fulfilled together, there is no tracking field. Shopify's guidance is to add tracking numbers afterwards, order by order, with Add tracking.
• Fulfillment services and fulfillment apps: if the service provides tracking, Shopify adds it to the order automatically, sometimes hours after the fulfillment was created. You can still add or update tracking yourself at any time, whoever created the fulfillment.
• Shipping label and courier apps usually write the number back to the fulfillment the same way, so the order ends up with tracking even though nobody typed it in the order page.

• Shopify Help Center: Bulk fulfillment
• Shopify Help Center: Fulfilling orders with a fulfillment service

What Shopify sends the customer by email

Shopify's shipping notifications live in Settings > Notifications > Customer notifications. They go by email and, where you have set it up, SMS. There is no WhatsApp option in Shopify itself.

Out for delivery and Delivered depend on Shopify receiving tracking events, so they do not arrive for a number Shopify cannot follow. Split shipments mean one shipping confirmation per fulfillment, so a customer can get several emails for one order.

• Shopify Help Center: Customer notifications

Common tracking problems and how to fix them

Telling the customer on WhatsApp

Customers often read WhatsApp before email. WhatsApp Pilot (Pro plan) sends an Order Fulfillment notice from your own connected WhatsApp number each time you fulfill all or part of an order. When Shopify has the carrier, tracking number and tracking link, the notice includes them; when it does not, those lines are left out and the message still goes out. Details are on the feature page at /features/order-fulfillment.

If you fulfill first and add tracking later, switch on Send tracking update when tracking is added later inside the Order Fulfillment automation. WhatsApp Pilot then sends one short follow-up with the tracking details once they appear on that fulfillment in Shopify.

• It is sent only if the first notice for that fulfillment went out successfully without a tracking number and without a tracking link.
• A carrier name alone does not count as tracking. A number or a link has to be added.
• At most one Tracking Update per fulfillment. Correcting the number afterwards sends nothing more on WhatsApp.
• No backfill: switching it on does not send updates for older shipments.
• No carrier events: WhatsApp Pilot does not send out-for-delivery or delivered updates. Shopify's emails cover those where the carrier supports them.
• Every send or skip, with the reason, is listed in Message History.

Tracking link vs order status link

The carrier link follows one parcel. The order status link, sent with the WhatsApp order confirmation, opens Shopify's order status page, which shows every fulfillment and its tracking once you add it. We explain the difference in /blog/whatsapp-order-tracking-link-shopify. For split shipments or couriers without tracking pages, the order status link is the one link that always works.