Shopify Automation: 10 Flow Workflows for Store Operations
Shopify automation for store operations runs on Shopify Flow, Shopify’s free automation app for the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans. Each workflow is a trigger (something happens in your store), optional conditions, and actions (tag, notify, hide, cancel, update). Its template library already has workflows for everyday jobs done by hand: low-stock alerts, hiding sold-out products, tagging orders, routing risky orders and handling B2B requests. Install Flow, search the templates by describing the job, and adjust one before you build from scratch.
Facts come from the Shopify Help Center pages on Shopify Flow and its workflow examples, read on October 23, 2026. Some older articles still describe Flow as a Shopify Plus feature; it is available on every paid plan, with a few features limited by plan.
How Shopify Flow works
- Trigger: the event that starts the workflow, such as Order created or Inventory quantity changed, or a schedule.
- Condition: a check on the data, such as the order’s risk level or a variant’s inventory.
- Action: what Flow does, such as adding a tag, sending an internal email, hiding a product or canceling an order.
Shopify says the possibilities are limited only by what the GraphQL Admin API can do, and apps can add their own triggers and actions through connectors. To find a template, use the search bar in the template library and describe what you want to automate.
10 workflows to copy
| # | Area | Template in the Flow library | What it saves you |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Inventory | Get notified when product inventory is low | Checking stock levels by hand |
| 2 | Inventory | Hide and republish products based on inventory level | Sold-out products showing on the store |
| 3 | Inventory | Get notified when demand increases for out of stock products | Missing a reorder for something people want |
| 4 | Orders | Tag orders by their shipping method | Sorting express orders for packing |
| 5 | Orders | Email logistics team when orders need to be expedited | Forwarding urgent orders manually |
| 6 | Orders | Tag orders paid with gift card | Finding gift-card orders for bookkeeping |
| 7 | Fulfillment | Get notified about irregularly large order quantities | Shipping a suspicious bulk order unchecked |
| 8 | Risk | Capture payment if the order isn’t high-risk (with manual capture) | Capturing every order by hand |
| 9 | Risk | Cancel and restock high-risk orders | Canceling and restocking by hand; review before turning on |
| 10 | B2B | Get notified and set up companies created by company account requests | Approving wholesale requests one by one |
Notes on a few of them:
- Inventory alerts (1–3) use the Inventory quantity changed trigger with the Product variant inventory quantity and Product variant inventory quantity prior conditions, so the workflow runs only the first time stock crosses your threshold, not on every sale below it.
- Risk routing (8–9) pairs with manual payment capture. Start with tagging and a notification for high-risk orders, and switch on automatic canceling only once you trust the pattern; real customers are sometimes flagged too. Our guide to Shopify fraud settings covers the setup.
- B2B (10) sits next to other B2B templates: Tag B2B orders, Send internal email when a B2B order is placed, and Remove D2C customer if not added to company after 3 days.
For data you want to keep on records, the custom data templates help: Store recent order total in a customer metafield for each new order keeps a value on each customer for segments and other workflows. Customer-side workflows, such as following up when there is no second order, are covered in Shopify Flow last order date.
Test and monitor
- Test with real events before relying on a workflow: place a test order, change a test product’s inventory, and watch the run history.
- Use Sidekick to generate test events, a feature added in Shopify’s Spring ’26 Edition, when placing orders by hand is impractical.
- Add error monitoring. Two templates exist: Get notified by email when workflow run errors are detected and Get a Shopify alert when workflow run errors are detected. Turn one on for every store that runs workflows unattended.
- Name workflows by job (“Stock: hide at 0”), so anyone on the team can see what runs.
When Flow is not enough
Flow works inside Shopify and with apps that offer Flow connectors. When you need to move data to tools outside that set, such as a spreadsheet, a project tool or an accounting system without a connector, a general automation service like Zapier fills the gap; see Zapier with Shopify. Marketing automations (welcome, abandoned cart, win-back emails) live in Shopify Messaging rather than Flow; our guide to Shopify marketing automation covers them. More operations topics are in the running a store hub.
Frequently asked questions
Is Shopify Flow free? Yes. Shopify Flow is a free app from Shopify for stores on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans. Most features are available on all of them, and a few are limited to certain plans.
What can Shopify automate? With Flow, anything a workflow can do through the GraphQL Admin API: tagging orders and customers, notifying staff, hiding or republishing products, holding or canceling risky orders, setting metafields and handling B2B company requests. Apps add more triggers and actions through Flow connectors.
Can Shopify Flow send emails to customers? Flow can send some customer emails, with actions such as sending an order invoice or a payment reminder, and templates such as Email a customer when a wishlist item is on sale, besides Send internal email for your team. Marketing automations built on Shopify Messaging emails moved to Messaging in March 2026.