Ability to specify processed_at timestamp when creating fulfillments

Products and Orders APIs
1

Hi, bumping up the old issue from Shopify forum, Solved: Re: Set date for fulfillments and refunds through Admin API - Shopify Community is it possible to specify a processed_at timestamp for fulfillments just like orders and refunds? The processed_at timestamp is important for accurate reporting of the actual fulfillment date when the fulfillment is not created real time on Shopify such as importing historical orders or delays on getting fulfillment data to import to Shopify for more than a day or so. It is surprising that processed_at is available for orders and refunds while not fulfillments.

We have been running important monthly reports in which we only care about the fulfillment date rather than the order date of the orders because revenue is only recognized when an order is fulfilled rather than when an order is placed, which makes a customizable processed_at for fulfillments being a key metrics for us and many other merchants for accounting best practices. Storing that timestamp outside of Shopify’s standard field will complicate implementation and reporting by having to maintain and cross reference two dataset.

2

There’s no support currently for a processed_at timestamp for fulfillments - could you create a order owned metafield and store the timestamp on that? Then you’d be able to fetch the time when you query orders.

3

The disadvantage of this is the custom metafield cannot be used for reporting, unlike the processed_at field at order and refund level. The metafield approach also causes issues with orders with multiple fulfillments for the same order unless we can add the metafield to fulfillments