Articles on: Shop & selling

The Shop: run your 3D printing orders from store to shipped

Not live for everyone yet. The Shop is rolling out to a closed pilot first, so some accounts don't see it yet. If your plan includes the Shop but your account isn't in the pilot, there is no Shop in the sidebar, and the Shop page (/panel/shop) says "The Shop is in a closed pilot". It opens to more accounts at launch.

Selling 3D prints means keeping two worlds in step. Orders arrive in Etsy, Shopify or WooCommerce, while the printing happens in SimplyPrint. Someone has to work out which file prints which product, in what size, how many, by when, and then remember to mark the order shipped in the store afterwards. With a handful of orders a week that lives in your head. With a few hundred it doesn't.

The Shop puts both worlds on one page. Orders come in from your stores, through the API or by hand. Each product is linked once to the Project that makes it. Releasing an order sends exactly the right print work to your print queue, and the order then follows the parts through printing, finishing, packing and shipping. When you ship it in SimplyPrint, the order can be marked shipped in the store as well, with its tracking number.

You find it at Shop in the panel sidebar (/panel/shop). Its settings are under Settings > Shop (/panel/settings/shop).

The Shop is part of the Print Farm and Enterprise plans. It is not part of the School plan, which leaves out Projects too, and the Shop is built on Projects. During the pilot the plan alone is not enough: the account also has to be in the pilot.

The Shop overview: the five stage cards (Needs you, Ready to release, In production, Pack & ship, Overdue) and Recent orders on a busy Fernwood Print Co. account

Who is the Shop for?
How an order flows through the Shop
The building blocks
The Shop overview
Do I need a connected store?
What the Shop never does on its own
Plans, the pilot and permissions
Related articles

Who is the Shop for?

The Shop is built for print farms that sell what they print:

Etsy, Shopify and WooCommerce sellers who are tired of copying orders by hand from the store into the print queue
Farms selling through several stores at once, who want one list of orders and one production floor, whichever store an order came from
Made-to-order farms that print every order fresh, and farms that keep stock of finished items and print ahead
Farms taking custom and B2B orders by email or phone, who can create those orders by hand next to the store orders

If you print for yourself, the print queue and AutoPrint are all you need. The Shop is for when there is a customer at the other end.

How an order flows through the Shop

Here is the whole journey of one order, using a Fernwood Print Co. order for two desk organizers and a planter:

The order comes in. Etsy, Shopify or WooCommerce sends it to SimplyPrint, or you create it by hand. Your import rules decide which orders come in and which of their items need printing. A light bulb sold next to a printed lamp shade stays on the order, but isn't print work. See Shop orders.
Each line finds what makes it. Every store product variant is linked to the Project variant (or a single file) that prints it. Once a variant is linked, every later order for it is linked too. An order with an unlinked line waits under Needs you. See Products and mapping.
You release it. Release turns the order's printed lines into print work in your print queue, with the right Project, size and quantity. If you trust your mappings, a store can release fully linked orders on its own.
It prints. The queue, AutoPrint and your printers do what they always do. The order shows how many pieces are printing and how many are still to come.
Pieces come off the bed and are put away. When someone clears the plate, the pieces are counted for the order and put on a tray or shelf. Finishing steps such as removing supports or inspecting each piece can follow. See Production work.
It's packed and shipped. Once every piece is ready, the order shows under Pack & ship. You pack it, mark it shipped with a carrier and tracking number, and SimplyPrint can mark it shipped in the store too. See Packing and shipping.

The building blocks

Next to the Overview, the Shop has five tabs, and the gear button opens its settings. Each one has its own article.

Orders

Every order in one list, wherever it came from: the store and its order number, when it was placed, when it's due, and separate statuses for payment, production and shipment. Open an order to review it, release it, hold it, cancel it, see its production and ship it.

Products

What you sell, and what makes it. Products are imported from your stores or added by hand. Each product variant is linked to a Project variant, so an order for "Hex desk organizer, Large" prints the large variant of the right Project. Auto-map matches links the obvious ones for you, and a CSV import handles big catalogues.

Work

The production floor. To do lists what needs a person right now: plates to clear, finishing steps, pieces to put away, blocked items and orders ready to pack. Scan reads a printer sticker, a plate label or a tray label and opens the right thing.

Inventory

Physical stock of finished items and bought-in parts, counted in whole pieces, with a full history of every movement. You can reserve stock for an order and dispatch it.

Customers

The people who order from you, with their orders, addresses and the store they came from. A customer can be erased when they ask.

Settings

Store connections and their import rules, automatic due dates, brands, locations and trays, and which workflow runs after printing and for each order.

The Shop overview

The Overview tab is where a working day starts. Five cards count your open orders by stage, and each one opens the list behind it:

Needs you: store changes, missing mappings and decisions, most urgent first
Ready to release: mapped and waiting for the print queue, soonest due first
In production: released orders, with how many printable units are still to make
Pack & ship: how many are waiting to be packed, and how many to be shipped
Overdue: open orders past their due date, plus how many more are due within a week

Below the cards, Recent orders shows the latest orders from your stores and manual sales.

On a new account the overview shows a "Welcome to Shop!" screen instead, and then a Finish setting up Shop checklist: bring in your orders, add what you sell, and link products to Projects. It goes away once everything is done, or when you press Hide.

Do I need a connected store?

No. A connected store is optional. You can create orders by hand (a phone order, an invoice customer, a craft fair sale) or through the API, and everything else in the Shop works the same way: mapping, release, production, packing and shipping.

When you do connect a store, you can connect several, including several of the same kind. Each store is its own connection with its own import rules, and every order and product remembers which store it came from. Today you can connect:

Etsy, connected from SimplyPrint. See Etsy and the Shop.
Shopify, through the SimplyPrint app in your Shopify admin. See Shopify and the Shop.
WooCommerce, through the SimplyPrint plugin in your WordPress admin. See WooCommerce and the Shop.

During the pilot, SimplyPrint guides each pilot farm through connecting Shopify and WooCommerce. Other stores show in the list as coming soon.

What the Shop never does on its own

Some things only happen when a person decides they should. That is on purpose:

Connecting a store imports nothing. You choose what to import once the store is linked.
Importing an order never starts a print. An order reaches the print queue only when it is released, by you or by a store you told to release fully linked orders automatically.
Changes from the store wait for you. When a store changes, refunds or cancels an order you already have, the order says so and waits for your review. A refund or cancellation pauses the order's prints that haven't started yet until you decide, but nothing is cancelled or deleted behind your back.
Nothing is written to your store except marking an order shipped (or fulfilled), and only for stores where you allowed it.
Stock is never synced. SimplyPrint can show the stock count a store reports, but it never changes your store's stock.

Plans, the pilot and permissions

The Shop is part of the Print Farm and Enterprise plans. While it's in a closed pilot, an account sees it only when it's in the pilot. A Print Farm or Enterprise account outside the pilot has no Shop in the sidebar, and opening the Shop page shows "The Shop is in a closed pilot" rather than an upgrade offer.

The finishing and packing steps in the Shop come from Workflows, which is also on the Print Farm and Enterprise plans and rides the same pilot.

The Shop has its own permissions, grouped under Shop in your user groups: from Access the Shop and see orders, which every other Shop permission builds on, to Erase customers and Manage store connections. See Shop settings and permissions for the full list and the user groups and permissions article for how groups work.

Updated on: 05/11/2026

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