How Orderkraft fits in

Orderkraft is a Shopify embedded app. You install it from the App Store and it runs inside your Shopify Admin like any other app, with its own pages under the Apps menu. It doesn’t replace anything you already have. It adds a layer for the production side of made-to-order.

What Orderkraft reads from Shopify

Orderkraft reads from your store rather than maintaining duplicate copies:

• Orders, via the orders/create webhook, so it knows when a made-to-order item has been sold
• Products, so you can pick which ones are made-to-order
• Locations, so you can mark which ones produce versus fulfill

Most data stays in Shopify. Orderkraft only stores what it needs locally (the bill of materials, the materials catalog, and made-to-order orders for reporting) and reads the rest live.

What Orderkraft writes to Shopify

When you set up a made-to-order product, Orderkraft writes a few things back to your store:

• A Made to Order metafield on the product, so other apps and themes can see it
• A Production Lead Time metaobject linked to the product, holding the time ranges and the calculated lead time
• A Location Type metafield on each location (fulfillment, production, or both)
• A Split Shipments fulfillment constraint, once you turn it on
• A theme app block called Lead Time Block that renders the lead time on the product page

Because these are stored on Shopify itself, your data stays portable. If you ever uninstall, Orderkraft cleans up the metafields and metaobjects it created, but your products, orders, and locations remain untouched.

What lives only in Orderkraft

A few things only make sense inside the app:

• The bill of materials for each made-to-order product
• The catalog of raw materials and components that go into a bill of materials
• The local copies of made-to-order orders that power the dashboard
• Your subscription state

What Orderkraft doesn’t do

It’s not a warehouse management system, and it doesn’t replace your accounting, shipping, or POS apps. It doesn’t manage inventory for finished goods (Shopify does that). It doesn’t talk to your machines or schedule work on the production floor.

If you need any of that, you’ll keep using the tools you already have. Orderkraft fits next to them.