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Key Concepts for Shopify Bulk Orders: Sends, Orders & Invoicing

Understand how Send To Many structures bulk orders in Shopify: Sends, recipient orders, aggregate invoices, tax handling, and revenue reporting.

Before you start using Send To Many, it helps to understand a few concepts that work differently than in a typical Shopify order.

What is a Send?​

A Send is the central concept in Send To Many. It represents a single bulk order: a group of recipients, the products they'll receive, and all the settings that go with it. When you create a Send, Send To Many generates an individual Shopify order for each recipient, all tied back to the original gifter order. You can track every recipient order, manage fulfillment, and view analytics from one place.

How Orders Work​

When you create a Send, Send To Many generates two types of orders in Shopify:

  • Recipient orders (aka "child orders", "ship to's"): One Shopify order per recipient in your Send. These are the orders your team fulfills and ships. Each recipient order has its own shipping address, products, and tracking.
  • Aggregate (gifter) order: A single order that ties all the recipient orders together. This is the order your customer (the gifter) pays. It captures the total revenue for the Send, including products, shipping, tax, and any discounts.

The aggregate order uses custom line items rather than your catalog products. This is intentional: it prevents inventory from being double-counted and keeps your stock levels accurate.

Recipient orders use "Send to Many" as both the payment gateway and the app in Shopify. Aggregate orders don't have these attributes. For a full breakdown of how each order type works, see What Happens After You Generate Orders.

Sales Tax​

Send To Many uses the sales tax settings configured in your Shopify store, including any third-party tax services you've connected (such as Avalara or TaxJar). Tax is calculated separately for each recipient order based on the products in that order and the recipient's shipping destination. This means a Send with 50 recipients shipping to 20 different states will have tax calculated correctly for each destination.

On the aggregate order, tax appears as a single line item representing the sum of all recipient order tax amounts. The detailed tax breakdown is available on each individual recipient order and in your analytics exports, which is what you'll need for tax compliance and reporting.

For more details, see Sales Tax Calculation and Reporting and Send Types and Settings for configuring how revenue and tax appear on your orders.

Revenue Reporting​

Because Send To Many creates both an aggregate order and individual recipient orders, revenue can appear twice in Shopify's built-in reports if you're not filtering correctly.

The fix is straightforward: filter your Shopify analytics reports by tags to separate aggregate orders from recipient orders. Every Send's orders are tagged "Send to Many #[Send ID]", and aggregate orders also carry the "Send to Many aggregate" tag. Use these tags to isolate the right set of orders for accurate revenue figures (whether you use $0 or calculated recipient orders).

We recommend reviewing this with your accounting team during setup. A quick test Send will show exactly how orders appear in your reports so you can set up the right filters before going live. For step-by-step instructions, see Filtering Shopify Reports.

Notifications​

Send To Many gives you full control over Shopify's order confirmation and shipping notification emails. This matters because a single Send can generate hundreds of orders, and you probably don't want your customer (or their recipients) getting flooded with automated emails.

The gifter (billing customer) will always receive an order confirmation on their aggregate order from Shopify. Beyond that, you control what happens with recipient order notifications. By default, all recipient order notifications are suppressed. You can configure this per send preset or override it for an individual Send. The three options are:

  • Suppress: No emails are sent for recipient orders. Suppressed orders use a placeholder email address to ensure nothing leaks through. This is the default and the right choice for most bulk sends.
  • Send to recipient: Each recipient gets their own order confirmation and shipping updates. Good for cases where recipients should know a shipment is coming.
  • Send to customer: The billing customer (gifter) receives notifications for every recipient order. Use this with caution: the billing customer may receive 3-4 emails per recipient (order confirmation, shipping confirmation, delivery updates), so a Send with 100 recipients could generate 300-400 emails to one person.

Order confirmations and shipping notifications are controlled by separate toggles, so you can suppress order confirmations but still send shipping updates to recipients, for example. For full details on configuring notification behavior, see Shipping Notifications.

Next Steps​

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