Setting Up Your First Routing Rule

Routing rules tell Orca how to assign orders to your locations. In Orca, you do not build rules through forms or technical settings. You describe what you want in plain language, and Orca AI turns your description into a working rule.

Where rules live

Open Orca from your Shopify admin under Apps. On Orca's Home page, the setup checklist includes Create a Routing Rule; your existing rules are listed on the Routing Rules page, which you can also reach through Orca's Settings. Rules are listed in priority order: when an order arrives, Orca works through the list from the top, and rules are applied after Shopify's default routing. You can reorder rules by dragging them, so the most important rule always sits first.

Creating a rule with Orca AI

From the Home checklist, click Create Rule, or use the Create Rule button on the Routing Rules page. Either way, this opens Orca AI, an assistant built into the app. Describe your routing preference in the text box the way you would explain it to a colleague. For example: "Send all paid online orders to the warehouse first, and if the warehouse is missing items, transfer them there so the order ships complete." Orca AI reads your description, confirms what it understood, and creates the rule.

The assistant also offers shortcuts for common needs: creating a new routing rule, setting a business variable, defining transfer-origin rules, or adding a fallback rule that catches any order your other rules do not cover.

What good rules look like

Rules can express real operational preferences. Some examples from practice: consolidate paid orders to a warehouse with a stock buffer and a transfer limit, split fulfillment across stores that do not transfer stock, or ship from the store closest to the customer. Each of these can be written as a plain sentence and turned into a rule.

Order matters

Because rules apply in priority order, put your most specific rules at the top and broader ones below. A useful pattern is to end with a fallback rule, so every order has somewhere to go even when no specific rule matches.

Once at least one rule is saved and Orca Actions is enabled in Settings, Orca begins routing your incoming orders automatically.