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Manufacturing businesses run on workflows: orders need approval before processing, inventory must be allocated across channels, and fulfillment follows specific rules based on order type, customer, or destination. Building these automations traditionally required either learning Shopify Flow's interface or hiring a developer.
Shopify Sidekick changes this by letting you describe what you want in plain language. Tell Sidekick your workflow requirements, and it generates a Flow automation with the appropriate triggers, conditions, and actions. No coding required.
This guide shows how B2B manufacturers can use Sidekick to build order approval, inventory allocation, and fulfillment workflows by simply describing their business processes.
Sidekick is Shopify's AI assistant, and one of its capabilities is generating Flow workflows from natural language descriptions.
Sidekick is available on Basic, Shopify, Advanced, and Plus plans. You'll need to access it from desktop (not mobile).
Sidekick performs particularly well for:
Workflows requiring advanced Liquid code or highly custom logic may need manual refinement after Sidekick generates the initial structure. Sidekick gives you a strong starting point, but complex manufacturing scenarios might require tweaking.
B2B manufacturers often need approval steps before orders proceed to fulfillment. Here's how to describe common approval scenarios to Sidekick.
Describe to Sidekick:
> "When an order is created with a total over $5,000, add the tag 'needs-review' and send an email to sales@company.com with the order details."
What Sidekick generates:
Why this matters for manufacturers:
Large orders may need credit verification, inventory confirmation, or sales team approval before committing to fulfillment. The tag makes these orders easy to filter in your admin.
Describe to Sidekick:
> "When an order is created and the customer has only placed one order and the order total is over $2,500, tag the order 'new-customer-review' and send a Slack message to #sales-alerts."
What Sidekick generates:
Why this matters:
First-time customers placing large orders warrant extra scrutiny for fraud prevention or to ensure they understand your terms.
Describe to Sidekick:
> "When an order contains products tagged 'custom-machining', add the order tag 'engineering-review' and send an email to engineering@company.com."
What Sidekick generates:
Why this matters:
Custom or configured products may need engineering verification before production begins. This routes the right orders to the right team automatically.
For more on order review processes, see How to Set Up B2B Order Review Workflows in Shopify.
Manufacturing businesses often allocate inventory across channels, customer types, or regions. Sidekick can help build workflows that manage these allocations.
Describe to Sidekick:
> "When inventory quantity for a product tagged 'critical-component' drops below 50 units, send an email to purchasing@company.com with the product name and current quantity."
What Sidekick generates:
Why this matters:
Critical components that could halt production need proactive reordering. Automated alerts prevent stockouts on your most important items.
Describe to Sidekick:
> "When inventory for any product drops below 20 units, send a Slack message to #inventory-alerts with the product name."
What Sidekick generates:
Why this matters:
Sales teams need visibility into low stock items to manage customer expectations and avoid overselling.
Describe to Sidekick:
> "When a product's inventory drops to zero, add the product tag 'out-of-stock'. When inventory increases above zero, remove the tag 'out-of-stock'."
What Sidekick generates:
Two workflows handling each scenario with appropriate triggers and conditions.
Why this matters:
Product tags can drive storefront behavior (hiding out-of-stock items, showing availability badges) and enable segment-based marketing.
Different orders may require different fulfillment paths. Sidekick can help route orders appropriately.
Describe to Sidekick:
> "When an order is created and the shipping address country is not United States, tag the order 'international-shipping' and send an email to exports@company.com."
What Sidekick generates:
Why this matters:
International orders may require export documentation, different carriers, or compliance review. Tagging them immediately ensures they're handled correctly.
Describe to Sidekick:
> "When an order is created with a total weight over 150 pounds, add the tag 'freight-required' and send a Slack message to #shipping."
What Sidekick generates:
Why this matters:
Heavy orders can't ship via standard carriers. Identifying them immediately allows your shipping team to arrange LTL or freight.
Describe to Sidekick:
> "When an order contains products tagged 'dropship-vendor-a', tag the order 'route-to-vendor-a' and send an email to vendor-a-orders@supplier.com with the order details."
What Sidekick generates:
Why this matters:
Products fulfilled by different suppliers need to route to the correct vendor automatically. Tags help track which orders went where.
For more on order routing, see Order Routing Logic in Shopify.
Sidekick excels at customer tagging workflows, which power your segmentation and marketing efforts.
Describe to Sidekick:
> "When an order is created and contains products tagged 'raw-materials', add the customer tag 'interest-raw-materials'."
What Sidekick generates:
Why this matters:
Customer tags based on purchase behavior enable targeted marketing. Raw materials buyers get different campaigns than finished goods buyers.
For a complete guide to this approach, see Target Industrial Buyers Smarter: Segment Manufacturing Customers by Product Category.
Describe to Sidekick:
> "When a customer's total spent exceeds $50,000, add the tag 'vip-account' and send an email to account-management@company.com."
What Sidekick generates:
Why this matters:
High-value accounts may qualify for dedicated support, special pricing, or account management attention.
Describe to Sidekick:
> "When a customer places their third order, add the tag 'repeat-buyer'."
What Sidekick generates:
Why this matters:
Repeat customers have proven their value and may respond well to loyalty offers or volume pricing discussions.
Keep your team informed of important events without manual monitoring.
Describe to Sidekick:
> "Every day at 8am, send an email to operations@company.com with a summary of orders from the previous day."
What Sidekick generates:
Why this matters:
Operations teams need a daily pulse on order volume to plan staffing and production.
Describe to Sidekick:
> "When an order is created with the tag 'rush', send a Slack message to #production immediately with the order number and customer name."
What Sidekick generates:
Why this matters:
Rush orders need immediate attention. Real-time alerts ensure they don't sit in the queue.
Describe to Sidekick:
> "When an order's payment status changes to 'payment pending', send an email to accounting@company.com with the order details."
What Sidekick generates:
Why this matters:
Payment issues need quick resolution to avoid fulfillment delays or customer frustration.
Tell Sidekick exactly when the workflow should run:
Specify all the criteria that must be met:
Tell Sidekick everything the workflow should do:
If Sidekick's first attempt isn't quite right:
After Sidekick generates a workflow, you'll need to review and activate it.
Before activating any workflow:
Workflows don't run until you manually activate them. This gives you control to:
After activation, monitor your workflows:
Complex manufacturing processes often require multiple workflows working together.
Workflow 1: Order Classification
> "When an order is created, if total is over $5,000 add tag 'high-value', if it contains products tagged 'hazmat' add tag 'hazmat-shipping', if shipping country is not US add tag 'international'."
Workflow 2: Routing by Classification
> "When an order is tagged 'high-value', send email to sales@company.com. When tagged 'hazmat-shipping', send email to compliance@company.com. When tagged 'international', send email to exports@company.com."
Workflow 3: Daily Review Summary
> "Every day at 5pm, send an email to management@company.com summarizing orders tagged 'high-value' from today."
Each workflow handles a specific piece, and together they create a comprehensive order processing system.
For guidance on when workflows become complex enough to warrant n8n instead of Flow, see Conditional Logic Automations: When to Use n8n vs Shopify Flow.
Begin with a simple, high-value workflow:
Once you've built confidence with simple workflows, tackle more complex scenarios. Sidekick makes it easy to experiment, and you can always refine or delete workflows that don't work as expected.
For manufacturers new to Shopify Flow, Sidekick removes the barrier of learning the interface from scratch. Describe your process, review what's generated, and iterate until it matches your needs.
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