Route Shopify Gift Orders to Your Packers With a Tag and Order Note

A buyer chooses kraft paper, writes “Happy birthday, Tom” and checks out. The choice is saved on the order. Then the order goes to the people who actually pack it: your own team with a packing slip, a shipping app such as ShipStation, or a fulfilment partner who only sees what you send them. If the gift details do not travel with the order, the parcel arrives with the invoice inside and no card.

This guide is about that handoff. It shows how Knotly marks gift orders with a tag, writes the gift details into the order note where packing slips and shipping apps already look, and shows the buyer what they chose after checkout.

Which orders count as gifts

Knotly treats an order as a gift when the buyer did any of these:

• ticked “This is a gift”,
• chose a gift wrap,
• wrote a gift message,
• gave an item its own gift (when per-item gifts are switched on).

These are the same orders listed on the Gift orders page of Knotly: Gift Wrap & Messages. Everything below applies to exactly that set.

Step 1: Approve the order permission

Writing a tag and a note onto an order needs permission to edit orders. If your copy of Knotly was installed before this feature arrived, Shopify asks you to approve the app’s new permission. Until you approve it, new orders are not tagged and their note is not changed. If you do not see the tags appear after Step 2, this is the first thing to check.

Step 2: Turn on the order handoff

Both options are off until you turn them on.

1. In Knotly, open Settings and choose Order handoff.
2. Check Tag gift orders. Each new gift order gets the tag in Tag, gift by default. A tag can have up to 40 characters and no comma.
3. Check Copy the gift message to the order note.
4. Click Save.

Both apply to orders placed after you save. Orders placed earlier are not changed, so do not expect last week’s orders to get a tag.

What the order note looks like

With the note option on, Knotly adds the gift details to the end of the order note:

Gift order
Gift wrap: Kraft paper
Occasion: Christmas
Gift message: Merry Christmas, Anna!

When items carry their own gift, each item is listed with its own wrap, occasion and message.

A note the buyer wrote at checkout (“Please leave at the back door”) stays first. Knotly adds its lines after it and never replaces what the buyer wrote.

The order note is the field almost every fulfilment tool already reads. Shopify’s packing slip, ShipStation and most fulfilment partners print or import it, so the person packing sees the wrap and the message on the same sheet they already use, without logging into another app.

Use the tag to route the work

The note tells the packer what to do. The tag tells your systems which orders need it.

In Shopify admin. Filter the Orders list by the tag to see every gift order at a glance, and save that as a view for the person who does gift wrapping.

In a shipping app. Apps such as ShipStation can use order tags in their automation rules. A rule on the gift tag can send gift orders to a separate queue, a packing station with wrapping paper, or a shipping service you prefer for gifts. The exact setup lives in the shipping app.

With a fulfilment partner. If your partner filters on tags, agree on the tag name with them, and change the Tag field in Knotly to match. A specific tag such as gift-wrap-needed is clearer to a warehouse than a generic one.

With Shopify Flow. Flow can react to a tag being added to an order, for example to send an internal email when a gift order comes in during a busy week.

To stop either option later, clear its checkbox and click Save. Tags and notes already added stay on those orders.

Step 3: Show buyers their gift after checkout

The other half of the handoff faces the buyer. After paying, a buyer wants to see that the wrap and the message were taken. Knotly has a Gift summary block for Shopify’s checkout pages.

1. In Shopify, open Settings > Checkout and click Customize.
2. Choose the Thank you page, click Add app block and choose Gift summary. Save.
3. Choose the Order status page and add Gift summary the same way. Save.

The block shows “Your gift” with the gift wrap, the card’s occasion and the message the buyer chose, plus each item that has its own gift. For an order without gift options it shows nothing, so it is safe to leave on every order. It speaks in the buyer’s checkout language: English, German or French.

A buyer who sees their message on the order status page has less reason to email you to ask whether it was saved, which matters most in the weeks when your inbox is fullest.

Printing in-house instead

If you pack yourself, you may not need the note at all. The Gift orders page lists gift orders with their recipient, wrap, message and occasion, and prints both the gift message card and a packing slip without prices for up to 250 selected orders at a time. You can also start from Shopify’s Orders page: select orders, open More actions and choose Print gift cards.

Many shops use both: cards printed from Knotly, and the tag and order note so nothing is missed when someone packs straight from the Shopify packing slip.

A short checklist before the busy season

1. Approve the order permission if Shopify asks for it.
2. Switch on Tag gift orders and Copy the gift message to the order note, and save.
3. Place a test gift order with a wrap and a message. Check the tag on the order, the lines in the note, and what your packing slip or shipping app shows.
4. Add Gift summary to the Thank you and Order status pages and look at both on the test order.
5. Tell whoever packs what the tag means and where the message will be.

A short setup means the message the buyer wrote is the message the recipient reads. The Knotly app page shows the rest of the gift flow, from the options in the cart to the printed cards.