I am fulfilling orders through the Shopify API. Some orders are fulfilled successfully, but others fail to be fulfilled

Fulfillment & Inventory
1

I have a client whose orders are being fulfilled through the API.
Some of the orders are fulfilled successfully, but some of them are not fulfilled at all.
At the moment, I don’t know the reason why some orders fail.

I need to understand:

  1. Is there a way to see a detailed history of which orders were successfully fulfilled?

  2. Is there a log or event history on Shopify’s side that shows fulfillment attempts and API errors?

  3. Could this be related to the API request limit? How can I know if this is my problem or an issue on the other side?

2

Hi @Biz-Tech_Services

Shopify gives you good visibility into which orders have been fulfilled, but not a centralized “API error log.” In the Admin UI you can check each order’s fulfillment status and timeline. Via the Admin GraphQL API, you can query orders with fields like displayFulfillmentStatus and the fulfillments connection to see which orders actually have fulfillment records, and use the events connection on Order (via the HasEvents interface) to retrieve timeline entries such as “Fulfillment created” or “Fulfillment canceled.” This lets you compare successful and unsuccessful orders and see whether a fulfillment was ever created in Shopify.

However, Shopify does not provide an API you can query to see a list of your failed API calls. If a fulfillment attempt fails before creating or changing anything, the only record of that failure is in the HTTP response and your own application logs. To build a better audit trail, you can subscribe to relevant fulfillment and fulfillment order webhooks (see the fulfillment order webhook topics) and log those events on your side. That gives you a trustworthy record of what Shopify says actually happened to each fulfillment, which you can correlate with your outbound calls.

Rate limiting can cause missing fulfillments if your app hits API limits and doesn’t retry properly. The Admin GraphQL API uses a cost‑based throttle (documented under Shopify API limits); when you’re throttled you’ll see 429 responses or GraphQL errors, and each response includes extensions.cost.throttleStatus so you can see remaining capacity. To tell if rate limiting is your problem, look in your logs for 429 or throttle-related errors, especially around times when expected fulfillments did not appear. If there are no throttle errors and no fulfillment events in Shopify, then the issue is usually in your app’s logic or error handling, or in communication with a third‑party system, rather than Shopify’s own limits.

1 Like