Connecting your Shopify store to StartFill

1Before you read on

Ten lines that will save you an hour.

You sell on Shopify. We store your stock and ship your parcels. Between those two facts sits a piece of software that moves orders one way and stock levels and tracking numbers the other. This manual is about choosing and setting up that piece.

There are three ways to do it. Most merchants should take Route 1, where we provide and run the connection. It costs nothing, has no per-order fee, and works on every Shopify plan including Basic. The other two exist because they suit particular situations, and we describe them honestly rather than steering you.

2The cast, defined once

Several products have confusingly similar names. Here they all are.

3How the pieces fit together

Your shop on the left, our warehouse on the right. All you are really choosing is what sits in the middle.

4Which route do I want?

5Before you start — all routes

These apply whichever route you pick. Steps 6.1 to 6.3 are shared groundwork; nothing else works until they are done.

What you need

• A Shopify store you own, or on which you are staff with app permissions.
• A free JTL customer account (JTL-Kundenkonto — the company login). This is not the same as a "JTL ID", which is a personal developer login and will not give you access to the network.
• A signed fulfilment agreement with us, so we can accept you in the network and assign a warehouse.
• Product data in reasonable shape: every product needs a unique SKU. We also need an EAN, a weight and dimensions for each one.

Product data: the part that decides how smooth this goes

Almost every delay we see at onboarding is data, not software. Before you begin:

• Every variant has its own SKU. Not just the product — each size, each flavour, each pack.
• SKUs are unique and stable. If you renumber articles later, the mapping to our warehouse breaks and stock can be picked incorrectly.
• EANs are real and match the physical barcode on the item we will scan.
• Weights and dimensions are per single sellable unit, not per carton.
• Food and supplements: tell us which SKUs carry a best-before date or a batch number, because that changes how we book them in and pick them.

6Shared groundwork

Three steps everybody does, in this order.

1. Create your free JTL customer account Go to fulfillment.jtl-software.com and register. It is free and there is no credit-card step. Make sure you are creating a JTL customer account, not a JTL ID. After login you land on the merchant dashboard. The numbers there stay at zero until we are actually holding goods for you.

   The portal has its own language switch, EN / DE, in the top-right corner. It is a separate setting from the one in FFN Connect, so you may need to set English in both places.

   

2. Get connected to StartFill and receive a warehouse Send us your JTL account e-mail address. Either we invite you, or you send us an invitation link from My network → My warehouses → Send invitation to fulfilment service provider. Once we accept, your status shows In Zusammenarbeit and a warehouse appears under My network → My warehouses.

   

   

   Until that warehouse row exists, nothing downstream can work. If it stays empty, the problem is the business relationship or an unaccepted invitation, never a software setting.

3. Tell us how you want to connect Route 1, 2 or 3. If Route 1, we take it from here and the rest of section 7 describes what we will ask you for.

7Route 1 — the StartFill Bridge

We provide the software. You provide access and data. Here is exactly what happens and who does what.

7.1 What it does

When a customer places a paid order in your Shopify store, Shopify notifies our bridge within seconds. The bridge converts the order into a picking job in the fulfilment network, against your stock in our warehouse. We pick, pack and ship it. The carrier tracking number and the new stock level travel back to Shopify automatically, so your customer gets a dispatch notice and your shop shows the right quantity.

7.2 What we need from you

1. Your JTL account e-mail So we can link you as a merchant and assign your warehouse.
2. Permission to install our app on your store We send you an install link. You open it, read the permission screen and click Install. Only you can do this — it is your customer data, and granting access is your decision, not ours.

   The app asks to view customer data, view store owner details, and view and edit products and orders. It needs customer data because a parcel without a delivery address cannot be shipped.

   

3. A product list with SKU, EAN, weight and dimensions A spreadsheet is fine. We create the matching articles in the network so that your SKUs map to the right JFSKUs.
4. Your stock Send it to our warehouse against an announced delivery (an inbound). Stock becomes sellable only once we have physically booked it in.

7.3 What we do

• Build and host the connection, and monitor that it is alive.
• Create your articles in the network and keep the SKU mapping correct.
• Map your Shopify shipping methods to real carrier services.
• Fix it when Shopify or JTL change something at their end.

7.4 What you should know before choosing it

In the interest of you making an informed decision rather than a flattered one:

• You depend on us for this piece. If you later leave StartFill, the bridge goes with us. Your JTL account, your warehouse relationship and your data remain yours, and Route 2 is always available as a replacement.
• It is Shopify-focused. If you also sell on Amazon, eBay or Otto and want one tool for all of them, ask us — but FFN Connect may genuinely suit you better.
• You do not get your own dashboard for it. You see everything in Shopify and in the free JTL portal; there is no third screen to log into.

8Route 2 — FFN Connect

A finished Shopify app from FFN Connect GmbH. Roughly 30–60 minutes, no programming.

8.1 Setting it up

1. Register at ffn-connect.de and link your JTL account Create an account, then open Settings → Organization & Users. In the JTL Fulfillment Network Account panel, connect the same free JTL customer account from step 6.1. If it says Connect rather than Connected as…, do that first.
2. Switch the interface to English if you want it It opens in German for a German-registered company and there is no flag icon. Click your name at the bottom-left, then Persönliche Einstellungen → Anzeige → Sprache → English. It applies per user, not per company, so each colleague sets their own.
3. Check your warehouse is there Settings → Warehouses. If it says No Warehouse, go back to step 6.2 — the app cannot create a Shopify location without one.

   

4. Start the trial or subscribe Settings → Plan & Invoices. Sales channels stay locked until a plan or trial is active. The Add sales channel card looks clickable before that and simply does nothing, which is confusing but not broken.

   

5. Install the app from the Shopify App Store Search for FFN Connect, click Install, and read the permission screen before granting it. The listing says "Free to install" — that only means Shopify does not bill you. FFN Connect GmbH bills separately.

   

6. Let the app create the fulfilment location In FFN Connect open Warehouses and click Synchronise. It creates a special fulfilment-service location in Shopify. Do not create one by hand. Then add shipping rates for the new location in your Shopify shipping profile.
7. Synchronise products, then release them to us Sales Channels → your Shopify channel → Synchronise products → Continue and synchronise. Then go to Items and release them to the fulfiller in bulk. Each product gains the new location at stock level 0 until we book the goods in.

   

8. Map your shipping methods, then send your stock Match each Shopify shipping method to one we offer. Without this, orders arrive with no valid carrier and stop. Then announce and send your inbound delivery.

8.2 What it costs

Rates observed on ffn-connect.de in July 2026, excluding VAT; the per-order rate falls as volume rises. A 14-day trial is offered without a credit card. Verify current pricing before you decide — it is not ours and we do not control it.

9Route 3 — doing it yourself

Free in licence cost, not in effort. Two sub-routes: by hand, or by code.

9.1 By hand, with CSV

The free portal offers import templates, imports and exports under Data exchange, plus scheduled FTP. There is no "connect a shop" button anywhere, because the free portal has no Shopify connector. In practice you export orders from Shopify and upload them here.

This is workable at a handful of orders a week and painful beyond that. It is a reasonable way to evaluate the network before committing.

9.2 By code, on the REST API

Your developer builds against two APIs: the FFN Merchant REST API and the Shopify Admin API. Every call to the merchant API carries three headers together:

• Authorization: ffn <token>
• x-application-id
• x-application-version

A mismatch between the token and the application ID is the most common cause of a 401. The token comes from the portal under External authorisations.

9.3 The Shopify Basic plan question — corrected

You will read, including in FFN Connect's own FAQ, that a custom app cannot be used on the Shopify Basic plan because protected customer data is only unlocked on higher plans. That is true of one kind of custom app and it is widely misreported as meaning Route 3 is impossible on Basic. It is not.

A Partner app with custom distribution is bound permanently to a single store, needs no Shopify app review, and does receive protected customer data. That is the route our own bridge uses, which is why Route 1 works on Basic.

Two practical consequences

• Use the webhook, not polling. The order payload delivered to orders/create contains the delivery address. Always verify the HMAC signature before trusting a webhook.
• For tracking write-back, poll the merchant API's outbound updates feed and match on the external order number you set when creating the outbound, then create the Shopify fulfilment with the carrier tracking number.

10Going live — checklist

Work down the list. Do not skip the order; each item depends on the one above.

• Free JTL customer account created, with a company e-mail address.
• StartFill accepted as your fulfiller; a warehouse row appears under My warehouses.
• Every Shopify variant has a unique SKU, plus EAN, weight and dimensions.
• Articles exist in the network and the SKU → JFSKU mapping is confirmed.
• Your chosen route is configured, and the first synchronisation ran shop → system.
• Our warehouse exists as a location in Shopify, with shipping rates attached.
• Shopify shipping methods mapped to the carrier services we offer.
• Inbound delivery announced and physically received; stock shows real quantities.
• One real low-value order placed and shipped end to end, tracking number visible in Shopify.
• Only then: old locations removed from the shipping profile.

11Troubleshooting

12What to send us to get started

Send it to your StartFill contact and we will come back with a connection plan and a date.

StartFill is the fulfilment arm of Blumental Bayern GmbH, Melanchthonplatz 4–6, 90443 Nürnberg, Germany. Sources: JTL-Guide (guide.jtl-software.com, Onlinehändler ohne JTL-Wawi), the JTL Fulfillment Network portal, Shopify developer documentation on protected customer data, and ffn-connect.de. Edition 2.0, July 2026 — supersedes the earlier two-option comparison guide, which understated what is possible on the Shopify Basic plan.