Uploading Orders Straight into Shipping Apps Isn’t the Best Strategy

When a big batch of orders comes in, whether it's for corporate gifts, employee swag, or event giveaways, most merchants look for a quick way to process them. One common route? Uploading the orders directly into a shipping app like ShipStation.

At first glance, it seems efficient. The orders go in, the labels come out. Done, right? Not quite.

Here’s why that “quick fix” causes more trouble than it’s worth, and why Send To Many offers a smarter solution built for Shopify-first businesses.

The Problem with Importing Bulk Orders straight into a shipping app 

Uploading CSVs directly into a shipping platform can feel like a time-saver, but it comes with trade-offs you might not see until it’s too late:

• Spreadsheet formatting hassles
  Manually copy-pasting data into a rigid template, matching exact column names, remembering special formatting rules, only to re-upload it over and over if you make even one small mistake.

  
  

• Inventory Gets Messy
  Orders bypass Shopify entirely, so your stock levels may not accurately reflect what has actually been shipped. Or setting up complicated syncing rules and making sure it works properly every time. You’ll either be overselling or stuck syncing everything manually.
  
  

• No Order History in Shopify
  All the valuable customer, order, and revenue data lives outside your main system. That means no useful analytics, no easy order lookup, and no way to see the full picture.
  
  

• Tracking Codes Become a Headache
  You’ll need to export and send tracking info manually, especially tricky if you’re managing dozens or hundreds of recipients.
  
  

• Customer Service Gets Frustrating
  If a gift recipient reaches out with a question (or a lost package), your team has no easy way to pull up their info. They're invisible in Shopify.
  
  

• No Clean Invoice
  Want to invoice a client for the full bulk order? You’re stuck stitching together reports from multiple tools. No single order, no simple invoice.
  
  

• Revenue? What Revenue?
  Since these orders don’t live in Shopify, they’re not included in your revenue reports. Did they even happen?!

Why Shopify Merchants Choose Send to Many Instead

Send to Many is built specifically for importing bulk orders with multiple recipients into Shopify. But instead of cutting Shopify out of the loop, Send to Many keeps everything where it should be: in Shopify.

• Keep inventory and revenue in Shopify
  Flexible and powerful settings to keep all the orders in Shopify, managing inventory and revenue exactly the way you want it to appear. Orders appear in your analytics, CRM, and reports. 

• Keep customer and order information
  Associate all the orders with the buying customer. Or make each recipient a customer. Whichever way you like. And manage notifications, sending them shipping updates and tracking if you like.
  

• Customer service is a breeze
  Need to find an order? Refund it? Update an address? It’s all right there in your admin, just like any other order.
  
  

• Clear, consolidated invoicing
  You get an aggregated view of the order, perfect for billing the corporate client.
  
  

Bottom Line

Shipping platforms are great for shipping. But they weren’t built to handle corporate gifting or influencer marketing orders end-to-end,  especially not for Shopify-first merchants.

Send to Many keeps your workflow clean, your data centralized, and your customers happy.

👉 Try it on the Shopify App Store or learn more at Send To Many.com.