Ship items to a third party

You can let a signed-in customer send an order to someone other than themselves, such as a gift recipient. The buyer keeps their own billing and shipping addresses on their account, and nominates the other person as a one-off at checkout.

This is different from a customer shipping to one of their own alternate addresses. Use this process when the recipient is a different person who becomes the shipping contact on the order.

Enable third-party shipping

Third-party shipping is turned on with a store variable. In the relevant store, create a new store variable:

1. Give it a Name that makes sense to you, such as Enable third party shipping contact.
2. Set the Key to show_new_recipient_form.
3. Set the Value to true.
4. Switch on Available in Liquid.

5. Click Save.

   

What happens at checkout

Once enabled, a signed-in customer sees a link at checkout to ship to a different person. When they enter the recipient’s details, StoreConnect records two separate contacts on the order:

• Billing contact: the signed-in customer who placed the order.
• Shipping contact: the recipient the order is sent to (the order’s Ship To Contact field).

StoreConnect matches the recipient against existing contacts. If it finds a Contact record with the recipient’s details, it links that contact as the Ship To Contact. If it finds no match, it creates a new Contact using the recipient’s name, email, and phone, under the buyer’s account.

Confirm it is working

Open your store’s checkout as a signed-in customer and confirm the option to ship to a different person appears. Place a test order to a new recipient, then open the order and confirm it shows the buyer as the billing contact and the recipient as the Ship To Contact.