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Creating a Corporate Gifting Order

Step-by-step guide to creating a corporate gifting Send — from spreadsheet upload to invoice and payment collection.

Corporate Gifting Sends let you collect payment from your customer (the gifter company) before generating recipient orders. Use this workflow when a client is sending gifts to their own customers, employees, or partners, and you need to invoice them first.

This guide walks you through the complete process: uploading the recipient file, selecting products, validating addresses, calculating shipping, generating an aggregate invoice, and collecting payment before orders are created.

Before You Start​

Prepare a spreadsheet with recipient details. See Formatting Your Upload File for column requirements and best practices.

Step 1: Details & Upload​

  1. From the Sends dashboard, click Create Send.
  2. Enter a Send name (e.g., "Q1 Client Appreciation").
  3. Select the billing customer (your customer) from the dropdown. If they're not listed as a customer in your store, you can add them here.
  4. Select Corporate Gifting as the send preset.
  5. Click Upload File and select your spreadsheet (CSV, Excel, or Google Sheets URL).
  6. Confirm the column mapping. Send To Many auto-detects headers when possible. Review the preview and adjust any incorrect mappings, then click Continue.

Step 2: Review Products​

If your file included product columns (SKU or a product or variant name):

  • We attempt to match each entry to your catalog.
  • Review matches. If we find multiple matches or variants, we'll give you the short list to choose from. Click any unmatched product to search your catalog and assign manually.

If your file didn't include products:

  • Select a product to send to all recipients. Everyone in this Send receives the same product.
  • If different recipients should get different products, add a product column to your file and re-upload.

Once all products are matched, click Continue.

Step 3: Validate Addresses​

Send To Many validates every address against USPS/postal databases.

  • Valid addresses are marked green. No action needed.
  • Addresses needing review show yellow warnings (e.g., missing apartment number, unclear street). Review the suggestion and accept or edit.
  • Invalid addresses are marked red. Click the Try Autocomplete button to edit the address and search for a valid match by typing in the Address 1 field. Or you can Exclude the recipient if no valid address is available.

Address validation runs automatically. Once all addresses are resolved, click Continue.

Step 4: Apply Shipping Rates​

Shipping rates are calculated for each recipient based on:

  • Each recipient's address
  • Specific products for each order, including your package weight and dimensions settings
  • Carrier rates based on your shipping settings in Shopify
Beyond built-in shipping

You're not limited to Shopify's default carrier rates. Send To Many also supports third-party shipping and delivery apps like Zapiet or Bird for store pickup and local delivery, and you can connect your own shipping provider through our Custom Shipping Dates and Rates API. See Send Types and Generation Settings for shipping configuration options.

You can apply shipping rates in batches or adjust them individually for each recipient. You can also apply custom rates to individual orders as needed.

Once all recipients have a shipping rate, click Continue.

Step 5: Finalize & Generate Invoice​

Review the Send summary:

  • Number of recipients
  • Aggregate line items and total aggregate cost
  • Tax details from across all orders and totals
  • Aggregate shipping total

Before generating, review your shipping notification settings. By default, Send To Many suppresses all Shopify order and shipping confirmation emails — this prevents hundreds of automated emails from going out to recipients. You can change this behavior per Send to notify recipients directly, notify the gifter, or keep notifications suppressed. See Shipping Notifications for full details on how notification settings work and how to configure them for each Send preset.

Once you've reviewed everything, click Generate Invoice. We create an aggregate invoice as a Shopify draft order. You can send the invoice to the billing customer from the draft order page for them to review, approve, and submit payment.

Auto-generate orders on payment

What happens after the invoice is paid depends on your send preset settings. If your Corporate Gifting send preset is configured to auto-generate orders on payment, recipient orders are created automatically as soon as the invoice is marked paid. If auto-generation is turned off, you'll receive a notification that the Send has been paid and needs orders generated — you can then review and generate manually when ready. See Send Presets & Settings for details on configuring the auto-generate option.

To view payment status and generated orders, go to the Send detail page. Orders also appear in your Shopify Orders page.

What Happens After Payment​

Once the gifter pays the invoice, several things happen in sequence. If any recipient orders fail to generate during this process, you'll receive a notification with details about which orders had issues — you can retry failed orders individually or in bulk from the Send summary page.

An aggregate (gifter) order is created. The draft order becomes a completed order that captures the full revenue for the Send. This "parent" order uses custom line items (not your catalog products) to avoid double-counting inventory. It's tagged "Send to Many aggregate" and marked as "Does not require shipping." Because this order lives alongside your regular Shopify orders, you may want to exclude it from fulfillment workflows and adjust how it appears in your reports. See Managing Aggregate Orders for details on handling parent orders — including how to exclude them from fulfillment, filter them from revenue reports, and mark them as fulfilled.

The gifter receives an order confirmation. Shopify sends the standard order confirmation email for the aggregate order. This confirms payment but does not include individual recipient tracking links. The gifter can view all their recipient orders and delivery statuses through their customer account page — our customer account extensions display Send history and order details in a clean, organized view. You can also download a CSV with all tracking IDs and delivery statuses from the Send summary page in the app.

Recipient orders are generated for each line in the spreadsheet. This will happen automatically if you have that preference set in your send preset. Otherwise, you'll receive an email notification that the order has been paid and you can "Process all orders" from the Send summary page. Each recipient gets their own Shopify order with their shipping address and products.

Fulfillments will process according to your Shopify fulfillment settings and workflows. Print labels, route to your 3PL, or fulfill however you normally process orders.

Recipients may receive tracking notifications depending on your notification settings. If you've left notifications suppressed (the default), recipients won't receive any emails. If you've enabled recipient notifications, they'll get shipping confirmations with tracking links as orders are fulfilled.

From this point, the Send is live. Monitor order status and shipping progress from the Send summary page or in the Shopify Orders dashboard.

Next Steps​

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