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ShipStation

Connect with ShipStation for shipping and fulfillment

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ShipStation Integration

Connect your FirearmCart store with ShipStation for multi-carrier shipping and label printing.

Features

Feature Description
Order push Fulfillments sent to your ShipStation queue
Real-time rates Compare rates across your ShipStation carriers at checkout
Label printing Print shipping labels in ShipStation
Tracking sync Tracking updates flow back to FirearmCart automatically

Prerequisites

Before connecting, you need:

  • Active ShipStation subscription
  • Carrier accounts connected in ShipStation (UPS, FedEx, etc.)
  • API key and secret from ShipStation

Getting API Credentials

  1. Log into ShipStation
  2. Go to Settings > Account > API Settings
  3. Generate new API Key
  4. Copy API Key and Secret

Setting Up

  1. Navigate to Plugins > Marketplace
  2. Find ShipStation
  3. Click Activate
  4. Enter your API Key and API Secret
  5. Pick your Store — FirearmCart lists the stores on your ShipStation account and selects it for you if you only have one
  6. Click Activate Plugin

Your credentials are verified against ShipStation before activation, and the tracking webhook is registered for you automatically — there is nothing to paste into ShipStation by hand. Once active, a ShipStation entry appears under Plugins in the sidebar.

Configuration Options

Configure these on Plugins > ShipStation:

Setting Description
Ship From Address Address, apartment/suite, city, state, ZIP — used to calculate rates
Carriers Which of your ShipStation carriers to use for real-time rates
Services Which services from each carrier to offer at checkout
Enable real-time rates at checkout Master switch for checkout rating through ShipStation
Max box weight (lb) Weight ceiling used when splitting an order across multiple boxes
Test Connection Verify your API key and secret authenticate with ShipStation

Only one ShipStation connection is allowed per store.

Order Push

Orders reach ShipStation per fulfillment, not automatically on every order:

  1. Customer places order in FirearmCart
  2. The order’s fulfillments are processed — automatically if you have fulfillment auto-processing turned on in Settings > Fulfillment, otherwise when you process them from the order page
  3. Each ShipStation-routed fulfillment is pushed into your ShipStation queue
  4. Create the shipping label in ShipStation
  5. Tracking syncs back to FirearmCart
  6. Customer receives shipping notification

What Gets Pushed

  • Order number (order ID plus fulfillment ID)
  • Customer email
  • Bill-to address (always the customer)
  • Ship-to address — the FFL for firearm fulfillments, otherwise the customer’s shipping address
  • Line items: SKU, name, quantity, unit price, UPC
  • Amount paid, shipping and tax
  • The order note

Dropship lines are stripped before the push — only warehouse-shippable items are sent.

Real-Time Rates

With Enable real-time rates at checkout on, ShipStation returns live rates at checkout:

  • Rates come from the carriers and services you selected
  • Rated against your Ship From address and the customer’s destination
  • Options that aren’t legal for the shipment’s item class (for example, handguns) are filtered out before the customer sees them
  • The customer’s selected rate is applied to the order

FFL Shipping

For firearm orders:

  • The FFL’s address is used as the ship-to on the fulfillment pushed to ShipStation, with the FFL’s business name as the company
  • The customer remains the bill-to
  • When a label is purchased through ShipStation rating rather than in the ShipStation UI, adult signature is set automatically for handgun and long-gun shipments

Tracking Sync

Tracking flows back two ways, and the two are de-duplicated by tracking number:

  • Webhook — ShipStation’s SHIP_NOTIFY notification, registered automatically at activation with a per-store secret
  • Polling — every 10 minutes FirearmCart also queries ShipStation for shipments on any fulfillment still awaiting tracking, because SHIP_NOTIFY is delivered best-effort and can be delayed or dropped

When tracking arrives the fulfillment is marked shipped, registered for tracking updates, and the customer notification fires.

Troubleshooting

Orders Not Reaching ShipStation

  • Use Test Connection on the ShipStation page to confirm the API credentials still authenticate
  • Confirm the fulfillment is actually routed to ShipStation
  • Confirm the fulfillment has warehouse-shippable items — dropship-only fulfillments are never pushed
  • Check that the fulfillment was processed (automatically or from the order page)

Tracking Not Updating

  • Give the 10-minute polling sweep a chance to run — it picks up shipments the webhook missed
  • Use Test Connection to confirm the API connection
  • If the webhook registration failed at activation, deactivate and re-activate the plugin to re-register it
  • Enter tracking manually on the fulfillment if needed
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