Recording Influencer Gift Orders in Shopify

Step by step: draft orders, tags, 100% discount

This is the manual route in Shopify admin. It works well for a handful of gifts. Button names come from Shopify's Creating draft orders help page and can shift as the admin changes.

1. Open a new draft order

   In Shopify admin go to Orders > Drafts and click Create order. A draft order is how you create an order by hand instead of through checkout.

2. Add the products

   Click Product, pick the item and variant, and click Done. Use the real product (not a custom item) so inventory and your cost per item stay attached to the order.

3. Add the creator as the customer

   Search for the creator, or create a new customer with their shipping address. A customer is required for location-based shipping rates.

4. Discount the goods by 100%

   Shopify lets you apply a custom amount-off discount to individual line items or the whole order. Take 100% off so the product total is $0, and give the discount a clear reason such as Influencer Gift.

5. Set shipping to $0

   Click Add shipping or delivery, choose Custom, name it Free Shipping, set the cost to 0 and click Apply. You still pay your carrier; this only controls what the order shows.

6. Tag the order

   In the Tags section add comma-separated tags such as influencer-gift and campaign-spring. Each tag is limited to 40 characters. Tags are what let you filter gifts out of sales reports later.

7. Check taxes, then create the order

   Under Payment, the Estimated tax link lets you turn Charge taxes on or off. Whether gifts are taxable is a question for your accountant. Then mark the order as paid or create it, depending on what your admin offers for a $0 balance, and fulfil it as normal.

Keep the creator's details on the same order. A handy companion is an influencer gift application form that collects the address and sizes before you create anything.

Reporting gifted orders

Gifted orders carry cost and no revenue, so they muddy order counts, average order value and margin unless you can separate them. Three habits help.

• Tag every gift the same way. Pick one gift tag and one tag per campaign, and never improvise.
• Set Cost per item on each variant. Shopify's profit reports only report profit for products that had a cost recorded when they sold.
• Log shipping and packaging outside the order. The order shows $0 shipping, so add your real carrier spend to a campaign sheet such as the influencer tracking spreadsheet.

If you also hand creators a discount code for their audience, generate unique codes in bulk with the bulk discount code generator.

Automating it (what Seed does)

Seed is a Shopify app for brands that gift product to creators. You share one branded link, the creator picks a product and variant and types their address, and a real $0 draft order lands in your Shopify admin. Each order is built like this:

That is the same recipe as the manual steps above, done in seconds and the same way every time. Seed does not change what a gift costs you, so keep using the calculator for your budget, or work out a budget first with the gifting ROI calculator.

Install Seed on Shopify

Frequently asked questions

Methodology and sources

Cost per gift = (items per gift x cost per item) + shipping per gift + packaging and handling per gift. Batch cost = cost per gift x gifts. Retail value is shown for context only and is not a cost. Starting values are illustrative assumptions, not benchmarks.

• Shopify Help Center: Creating draft orders (steps, custom shipping, tags limited to 40 characters).
• Shopify Help Center: Profit reports (profit needs a recorded cost per item).
• The Seed order recipe above is read from how Seed's own gift-order code builds orders.

Last updated: October 29, 2026