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Publish to your store

Create the customer-facing listing on your storefront and add the product's SKU so orders match automatically.

5 min read

A product in your PrintPort catalog has a make cost and a SKU, but no storefront, so a customer cannot buy it yet. To start selling it, create the listing on your own store and add the product's exact SKU to that listing. This page covers that final step and explains the two distinct meanings of the word publish.

Two meanings of publish

Publish refers to two separate actions that do different jobs. Keeping them distinct is the key to this page.

Publish in PrintPorta status flag
Changes your product from Draft to Live. Live means the product is eligible to auto-match incoming orders. It does nothing else, and it never touches your store.
Publish to your storeyou do this
Creating the real listing on your storefront — Shopify, Etsy, or wherever you sell — and adding the SKU to it. This is the page a customer buys from, and you create it, not PrintPort.

PrintPort never creates or pushes a listing

There is no send-to-store action anywhere in the Catalog. Marking a product Live does not push anything to Shopify, Etsy, or any other store. The listing your customer buys is always one you build yourself, and the only thing that connects it back to PrintPort is a matching SKU. For the underlying model, read Designs, Products & Listings first.

Step 1: Make your product Live

Before you list anything, confirm the PrintPort product is Live, not Draft. A draft product does not auto-fulfill: an order for it arrives unmatched and waits for you to map it by hand. There are two ways to set a product Live.

  1. 1

    When you first build it

    In the Composer, finish on 2 · List it and save with Save & publish instead of Save as draft. The product is saved already Live.
  2. 2

    Or change it later

    Open the product from your Catalog and use the Publish / Move to draft toggle in the product drawer. You can switch it back and forth at any time.

The status is visible at a glance. Live products carry a green Live chip, drafts carry a neutral Draft chip, and the Catalog hero counts both. See Manage your catalog for the full draft-versus-live view.

Step 2: Create the listing on your store

Build the actual product page on your storefront and add the SKU to it. The exact screens differ by platform, but the sequence is the same.

  1. 1

    Copy your PrintPort SKU

    Open the product in your Catalog and click its SKU in the drawer to copy it. Copying it, rather than retyping, is the most reliable way to get every character right. PrintPort displays every SKU in uppercase, but you do not have to keep that case on your store. Matching ignores case, so a lowercase copy works just as well.
  2. 2

    Create the product on your store

    In your storefront's own tools, create a new product page. The photos, title, and description are all yours to write. This is the page your customer sees and buys.
  3. 3

    Set your retail price

    You set the selling price on your store, not in PrintPort. PrintPort never stores a retail price. Price it above your product's break-even — its make cost — so each sale is profitable, and charge your customer shipping at checkout. See Price your products for the math.
  4. 4

    Paste the SKU into the listing's SKU field

    Enter the copied SKU into your store's SKU field. Every character must be the same, but case and leading or trailing spaces do not matter: PrintPort uppercases and trims both sides before it compares. This one code is the entire connection between the sale and what PrintPort makes.
  5. 5

    Publish the listing on your store

    Make the listing live in your store so customers can buy it. From this point, orders for it flow into PrintPort automatically.

The SKU characters must match

Matching is character-for-character, but case and surrounding spaces are ignored, because PrintPort uppercases and trims both sides first. So DRAGON-01, dragon-01, and Dragon-01 all match the same product. What breaks the match is a genuinely different character: an underscore where you used a hyphen, a space in the middle, or a typo. The full explanation of matching and its pitfalls is in The SKU link.

Requirements for auto-matching

When an order arrives from a connected store, PrintPort looks for one product in your catalog whose SKU matches, comparing the characters after it uppercases and trims both sides. It fulfills that order automatically only when all of the following are true.

Every requirement must hold for an order to fulfill without you.

RequirementWhy
The product is LiveDraft, archived, and deleted products do not auto-match — their orders land as "No product match."
The SKU is on the listingWithout a SKU on the store listing, there is nothing for PrintPort to match against.
The SKU characters line upThe match is character-for-character; case and surrounding spaces are ignored, but every actual character must be the same.
Your store is connectedOrders only reach PrintPort from a storefront you have connected.
  • The product is Live
    Why
    Draft, archived, and deleted products do not auto-match — their orders land as "No product match."
  • The SKU is on the listing
    Why
    Without a SKU on the store listing, there is nothing for PrintPort to match against.
  • The SKU characters line up
    Why
    The match is character-for-character; case and surrounding spaces are ignored, but every actual character must be the same.
  • Your store is connected
    Why
    Orders only reach PrintPort from a storefront you have connected.
  • Product saved with Save & publish (or toggled Live in the drawer)
  • Store listing created on your own storefront
  • The SKU pasted into the listing’s SKU field (case and stray spaces do not matter)
  • A retail price above your break-even set on the store

Your storefront reaches PrintPort through Shippo. PrintPort supports Shopify, Etsy, Amazon, TikTok Shop, eBay, Walmart, WooCommerce, Wix, Squarespace, Magento 2, and BigCommerce. If your store is not connected yet, start with Connect Shippo and Link your store in Shippo, or see the full list of supported platforms.

After the listing goes live

Once the listing is live and the SKU lines up, a new sale for that listing arrives in PrintPort already matched to the right product. What happens next depends on your fulfillment setting. With automatic fulfillment off, which is the default, the order waits as Held for approval until you approve it. With it on, the order flows straight into production. In both cases, your card is charged the make cost only when the order goes to production. See Automatic vs manual for the difference.

If a SKU does not line up — a mistyped character, an underscore where you meant a hyphen, or a product still in draft — the order arrives with a No product match chip and lands in the Action required tab. You can rescue that single order by mapping it to the right product, but the lasting fix is to correct the SKU on the store listing so the next order matches automatically.

Fix the source, not just the order

Mapping an order rescues that single sale. A corrected SKU with the right characters on your store listing prevents the next miss. Fix order problems walks through mapping an unmatched order step by step.

Next steps

Where to go once your listing is live and orders are flowing.

The SKU linkThe one code that ties your store to PrintPort — matching, mismatches, and how to fix them.Manage your catalogDraft versus Live, editing, archiving, and deleting products.Price your productsMake cost, break-even, and the below-cost alert.Fix order problemsUnmatched SKUs, declined cards, and other things that need you.