Getting Started with Shopify Flow

Shopify Flow is one of the most underused features of Shopify Plus — and one of the most powerful. It's a no-code automation builder that lets you create conditional workflows triggered by events in your store. If you're not using it, you're leaving efficiency (and money) on the table.

What Can Shopify Flow Do?

Flow works on a simple trigger → condition → action model. Something happens in your store (the trigger), Flow checks if certain conditions are met, then takes an action. The possibilities are vast:

• Automatically tag customers based on purchase history, total spend, or product categories bought
• Hold high-risk orders for manual review before fulfilment
• Send internal Slack notifications for VIP orders or low stock alerts
• Auto-apply loyalty discounts when a customer reaches a spend threshold
• Automatically hide out-of-stock products from collections
• Create to-do tasks for your team when a B2B order comes in

Your First Flow: VIP Customer Tagging

Let's build something immediately useful. This flow will automatically tag any customer as 'VIP' the moment their total spend exceeds £500.

1. 1Open Flow from your Shopify Plus admin and click 'Create workflow'
2. 2Set the trigger to 'Order created'
3. 3Add a condition: Customer total spent > 500 (in your store currency)
4. 4Set the action to 'Add customer tag' with the value 'VIP'
5. 5Activate the workflow — it runs automatically from this point forward

Fraud Prevention Workflow

One of the most valuable use cases for Shopify Flow is automated fraud prevention. Rather than reviewing every high-risk order manually (or worse, missing them), Flow can hold them automatically.

• Trigger: Order created
• Condition: Shopify fraud risk level = HIGH
• Action 1: Cancel fulfilment and hold order
• Action 2: Add internal note 'Flagged for fraud review'
• Action 3: Send Slack notification to your operations team

Connecting Flow with Other Apps

Flow integrates natively with many Shopify Plus ecosystem apps including Klaviyo, Gorgias, Yotpo, and Loyalty Lion. This means your automations can span your entire tech stack — a customer hitting a spend threshold can simultaneously get a VIP tag, be added to a Klaviyo VIP segment, and have their Gorgias ticket priority upgraded.

“The brands that get the most from Shopify Plus aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets — they're the ones that have invested time in understanding what Flow can do for their operations.”