less than a minute read • Updated 2 hours ago
Multi-ship overview
What multi-ship is and how shipping one order to multiple addresses changes the cart, checkout, and receipts.
Multi-ship lets a single order be split across multiple shipping addresses. Each product in the cart is assigned to a "ship to" destination, and the order is treated as a set of sub-orders, one per address. This is useful for stores selling gifts, food items like cookies or desserts, or anything one customer commonly buys to send to several people.
When to use it
Multi-ship makes sense when a single customer regularly needs items in one order delivered to different addresses. For a typical store where every order ships to one place, you don't need it and can leave it off.
How it works
When multi-ship is enabled and products are assigned to different destinations:
The cart groups products under "ship to" headings, one group per address.
The checkout collects a separate shipping address for each destination.
Each destination gets its own shipping options, calculated using your store's shipping configuration.
Each destination shows its own subtotal.
The email receipts reflect the per destination grouping.
You can also collect custom information per address at checkout (for example, a gift message or referral source). See Add custom fields per shipping address.
Assigning products to a destination
Products are assigned to a destination using a shipto value when they're added to the cart. A destination only exists once at least one product is assigned to it, and a cart needs products with at least two different shipto values to show the multi-ship grouping. See Set up multiple shipping addresses for how to add this to your products.
Important limitation
Like all product options, a product's shipto value cannot be changed once the product is in the cart. To move an item to a different destination, the customer removes it and adds it again with the new destination. Make it easy for customers to view and edit their cart so they can do this.