Finally, stores using Flow benefit from an easy way to connect apps and run actions across different tools. Using pre-built Shopify Flow Connectors, you can integrate with over 80 other apps, enabling your automated workflows to trigger actions in other tools.

With Shopify Flow, you can quickly add customers to a Klaviyo email list, notify your team in Slack of to-dos, or create support tickets in Gorgias, all without switching tools or completing any manual actions.

How Does Shopify Flow Work? (Triggers, Conditions, Actions)

Shopify Flow requires no development or tech knowledge whatsoever. Users simply need to be able to think in terms of “When this happens, and if these criteria are true, then do this.” The building blocks of every Flow automation are:

1. Trigger: The event that starts the workflow. This could be something happening in your store (e.g. a new order is placed, a customer signs up, an inventory level changes) or even in an integrated app. Example Triggers: Order created, product added, customer’s tag updated, etc.

2. Condition: The rule or criteria that must be true for the action to proceed. Conditions are optional. You can have workflows that always run on a trigger without extra conditions, but usually, you’ll want a filter. Example Conditions: Order total is greater than $100; Customer tag is “VIP”; Inventory level is below 5; Day of week is Monday; etc. You can also combine multiple conditions (using AND/OR logic) for more sophisticated rules.

3. Action: The task executed when the trigger fires and conditions are met. This is the “then do X” part. Shopify Flow offers many actions, such as updating an order or customer record, sending an email or Slack message, adding a tag, or making an HTTP request to an app. Example Actions: Send an internal email notification, Update inventory quantity, Tag an order as “High Risk”, Cancel an order, Create a support ticket in Gorgias, etc.

Setting Up Shopify Flow 

It’s relatively easy to get up and running with Shopify Flow. Here’s how:

1. Install the Shopify Flow App: In your Shopify admin, go to the Shopify App Store and add the free Shopify Flow app. Once installed, you’ll find it under your Apps menu.

2. Open Flow and Explore Templates: Launch the Flow app in your admin. You can either start from scratch or use a pre-built template. If you’re new to Flow, click “Browse Templates.” Shopify provides a library of common workflow templates categorized by function (marketing, inventory, orders, customers, etc.). Note that the templates are fully customizable, so pick whichever is closest to your needs, and you can edit it later. 

3. Create or Select a Workflow: If you found a template that suits your needs, select it and click “Install” to add it to your workflows. If you want to build your own, click “Create workflow.” In the blank workflow builder, you’ll first choose a trigger from a list of events.

4. Configure the Trigger: For a new workflow, after clicking “Create workflow,” you’ll be prompted to select a trigger – i.e. the event that will kick off your automation (e.g. customer created, order paid, inventory quantity changed, etc.). Templates will have the trigger pre-defined, but you can adjust it here if needed.

5. Integrate Flow with your Apps: Shopify Flow uses Connectors to integrate with other apps. If you have apps like Klaviyo, Yotpo, Trello, Asana, Gorgias, Google Sheets, etc., you can likely incorporate them into a Flow. At the trigger step, you can install whichever app you need as long as it's already installed and configured in your Shopify admin. Note that if you have a very specific integration need and there’s no pre-made connector, merchants/developers on Shopify Grow, Advanced or Plus plans can use the “Send HTTP request” action to ping external services via API.

6. Add Conditions: Next, you can add a Shopify Flow Condition step if your workflow needs one. Click the “+” icon (or the Then > Condition option) to set up a rule. Define the condition using the available fields and operators. You can add multiple conditions or even “Otherwise” paths if you want the workflow to do something else when the condition isn’t met.

7. Add Actions: After your trigger (and any conditions), specify the Action to take. Click “+” and choose Then > Action, then select an action from the list. This could be an internal action (like “Add tag to order” or “Update product”) or an action in an integrated app (“Send email via Klaviyo”, “Create Slack message”, etc.). Templates will have these filled in, but you can modify them as needed.

8. Review and Turn On: Give your workflow a clear name (e.g. “Low Stock Alert Workflow”). Double-check the trigger, condition, and action setup to ensure it matches your intent. Next, test your new workflow to ensure everything performs as expected. Trigger the workflow scenario and see if Flow performs the action, or use the “Run workflow” option in the app to manually test it with sample data. If everything looks good, toggle the workflow to Active. Once active, Shopify Flow will start monitoring for the trigger event and run your workflow whenever your conditions are met. 

Once your first workflow is running as expected, consider other pain points and repetitive tasks left in your operations that you can build new Flows for and get to work! 

Popular Shopify Flow Workflows and Examples

Not sure where to start? Here are some of the most common Shopify Flow examples, along with a few niche options to test on your store.

Low Inventory Alerts & Auto-Replenishment (Inventory Management)

Don’t wait until a product is completely sold out to act. A Flow can monitor stock levels, and when a variant’s quantity falls below, say, 5 units, it triggers actions: send an email to your purchasing manager or a Slack message to your team, tag the product as “Low Stock,” and even create a restock P.O. request. 

This ensures you never miss reordering your best-selling products, avoiding lost sales due to stockouts.

VIP Customer Tagging & Rewards

At a time when customer acquisition costs are skyrocketing, fostering customer loyalty/retention has never been more important. This flow can automatically identify your top customers. For example: Trigger: customer places an order; Condition: customer’s total lifetime spend > $x (or order count > x); Action: tag the customer as “VIP” and send a special thank-you or discount code via email. 

This segmentation also helps personalize marketing: your VIPs can get enrolled into exclusive perks without you manually tracking their spend. 

Fraud Prevention: Auto-Cancel High Risk Orders

There are many ways to use Flows to protect your business from fraud, sketchy transactions, and bad actors. If you have a list of blacklisted customers or IP addresses, you can set up a Flow to trigger on order creation that checks if the customer’s information matches something on your blacklist and immediately cancels the order and tags it as fraud or for review. 

Similarly, you could create a Flow to hold back orders for review when purchases over a certain amount are made with gift cards or by customers who have returned over a certain number of orders. This workflow is great for peak periods like BFCM or Boxing Day, when your team might be too busy to check orders manually. 

Automated Review Management

Automation makes review management so much easier. For example, when a new product review is submitted on your store, a Flow can check the star rating: if it’s 4-5 stars, automatically add the review to a “happy reviews” Google Sheet and maybe trigger a Slack shout-out to the team; if it’s 1-2 stars, open a customer support ticket in your helpdesk so your team can quickly follow up with the unhappy customer. 

This way, positive feedback is celebrated, and negative feedback is addressed immediately, all without any manual work.

Advanced Abandoned Cart Recovery 

While Shopify’s built-in abandoned checkout emails handle basics, with Flow, you can build a more tailored recovery strategy. For example, your trigger: cart is abandoned; Condition: customer is logged in or has an email; Action: add customer to an email sequence in Klaviyo for cart recovery, and/or notify your sales team in Slack to personally follow up for high-value carts.

Niche Flow Implementations

Here are some more Flow ideas to get you thinking about ways you can leverage the app for your own store:

Seasonal Launch Window

Do you rotate inventory seasonally, or do you have season-specific products? Set up a workflow to automatically publish products.

• Trigger: date reaches x

• Condition: product “launch date” equals today

• Action: Publish product, push to “New Arrivals”, notify social team via Slack

Age Restricted Routing

If you sell age-restricted products or have products that might need extra verification in specific regions/markets, flow can be leveraged to make additional checks easy:

• Trigger: order created

• Condition: Line items tagged “18+”, province = QC

• Action: Add tag “ID-check”, email customer service to verify

Chargeback Early Warning

Want a heads-up for potential chargebacks? Try this Flow:

• Trigger: Order refund created

• Condition: Reason = “fraud” or “not received.”

• Action: Add customer tag “chargeback-watch”, post to CX channel, auto-create follow-up task in helpdesk

Vendor Recall Notification

This Flow can help you notify affected customers when you receive word that one of your products is included in a recall:

• Trigger: Product tagged “recall.”

• Condition: Orders in the last 30 days contain this SKU

• Action: Export affected customers to Google Sheet, create helpdesk tickets, send recall email template

Perishables Countdown

Use this Flow if you sell anything perishable and are tired of manually marking down items close to their use-by or expiration dates:

• Trigger: Inventory quantity changed (if freshness should be assessed when stock moves)

• Condition: Product type = “perishable”, lot age metafield > 20 days

• Action: Tag product “discount”, push to “Promo” collection, ping buyer to reorder

SEO Completeness Checker

Ensure new additions to your store are properly optimized for search engine visibility:

• Trigger: Product created or updated

• Condition: Missing SEO title or description, no image alt text

• Action: Tag “needs-SEO”, email merchandising checklist, optionally unpublish until complete

What’s great about Shopify Flow is how the more you use it, the more you’ll come up with new workflow ideas to test out and optimize. Start with the obvious ones, and branch out as you think up more exciting implementations. 

Tips for Getting the Most Out of Shopify Flow

Shopify Flow is built to be straightforward and easy to use/experiment with, but there are still a few ways to ensure you’re getting the most out of the app:

1. Start with templates: While creating Flows from scratch is easy, Shopify has already done much of the work by providing templates for common business activities and needs. Always check the Templates section before starting to build something fresh. 

2. Use descriptive names: It might not be an issue when you have just a few distinct Flows running on your store, but as you expand, it’ll get harder to remember what each workflow does. “Anti-Fraud Flow 1” might be good for now, but “Blacklist Auto-Cancel” is better when you also have a “Gift Card High Value Review” Flow, for example.

3. Don’t try to automate everything at once: Pick a few high-impact flows to start. Focus on areas that clearly save time or reduce errors. For tasks that are very infrequent or require a lot of subjective human judgment, automation might not be worth the complexity.

4. Always test before going live: Shopify Flow makes testing out your workflows extremely easy. Always ensure everything is running exactly as you expect before switching your Flows on. 

5. Keep an eye on performance logs: After a workflow executes, Flow provides a log of what happened, called a workflow run, found under “Recent runs”. Use that to monitor its performance and behaviour for any unusual or unexpected behaviour. 

By following these tips, you’ll develop robust workflows that genuinely make your life easier and keep your store running more smoothly overall.

Conclusion

Shopify Flow turns routine store management into a smooth, automated system that runs in the background while you focus on growth. By connecting your apps, reducing errors, and freeing up your team’s time, it acts as an invisible operations assistant built right into your Shopify admin.

If you’re ready to start automating workflows or want expert help designing more advanced flows, we at Blue Badger, a Shopify Plus Partner agency, can guide you from setup to optimization. Get in touch with us today to learn how automation can take your ecommerce operations to the next level.