Validating addresses in your Shopify admin
When there's a potentially invalid address entered in your Shopify admin, a warning displays and you're offered suggestions to help you update the address details. Address validation suggestions are offered when there is high confidence in the address details that were intended. This helps you reduce orders with potentially invalid addresses, and minimize delayed or failed deliveries.
Address validation occurs automatically for your online orders, and is also triggered when you perform certain actions. Address validation happens in the following scenarios:
- A customer places a new online order.
- An order is created through an API.
- You create a draft order and then add a new or existing customer to the order.
- You add or update a location that you fulfill orders from.
- You create a shipping label when fulfilling an order.
- You add a new customer profile or update an existing customer address in your admin.
If you subscribe to Shopify Plus, then address validation is also triggered in the following scenarios:
- You add a new B2B company's shipping or billing address.
- You add a new B2B company location's shipping or billing address or update an existing B2B company location's shipping or billing address.
On this page
Eligibility for address validation
Address validation is available to all merchants on any plan and is always active on your store. You can review and resolve address validation issues from both your Shopify admin on desktop and the Shopify mobile app.
The address validation feature is available for shipping addresses in the following countries:
- Australia
- Austria
- Belgium
- Bermuda
- Canada
- Czechia
- Denmark
- Faroe Islands
- France
- Guernsey
- Italy
- Liechtenstein
- Luxembourg
- Netherlands
- Poland
- Portugal
- Slovenia
- South Korea
- Switzerland
- United States
Orders from unsupported countries still have their addresses inspected, but might not return as many specific address validation suggestions as those from supported countries.
Types of address validation issues
There are 2 main types of address validation issues:
- Warnings: Indicated by a yellow icon, a warning might result in a delayed or failed delivery and should be updated.
- Errors: Indicated by a red icon, an error is very likely to result in a delayed or failed delivery, and should be updated. Errors prevent you from marking the address as valid on orders.
Use your discretion to determine when to mark a flagged address on an order as valid. Fulfilling orders without resolving warnings or errors can result in delayed or failed order deliveries to your customer.
Filtering orders by address validation status
You can filter your Orders list to display orders by their address validation status. Select Address validation as the order filter and choose which filters to apply to your order view:
- Not validated: Displays orders that were excluded from address validation. These can include orders without shipping addresses.
- Has issues: Displays orders with address validation warnings or errors.
- No issues: Displays orders that were successfully validated.
Learn more about filtering orders.
Resolve issues with addresses
In your Orders list, the address validation for each order is saved so you can resolve the address issue at any time before fulfillment. In other places where address validation occurs in your admin, the validation is triggered when you enter an address into an address field, such as when you add or edit a fulfillment location address. Resolve these issues at the time the validation error is flagged.
When a warning or error is detected on an order's shipping address, the Edit shipping address dialog displays the address that you entered side by side with a summary card. The summary card has 2 states:
- Suggested address: A yellow warning state with a suggested valid address. You can accept the suggestion, keep the original address, or edit the address manually.
- Address issue: A red error state when the address can't be delivered to. You need to update the address before you can fulfill the order.
If there's an error on a shipping address, then you can't mark the address as valid. To reduce the risk of delayed or failed deliveries, resolve any address validation warnings or errors as soon as they're flagged. If you're unsure how to resolve a validation issue with a customer's address, then contact the customer to confirm their address before fulfillment.
Steps:
Orders
From your Shopify admin, go to Orders.
Click the order with a shipping address validation issue that you want to resolve. You can also click the address validation icon beside the order number to open the Edit shipping address dialog directly from the Orders list.
In the Customer section, under Shipping address, click Review address issues.
In the Edit shipping address dialog, review the summary card beside the shipping address fields, and then resolve the issue by doing one of the following:
- To accept the suggested address, click Use suggestion.
- To keep the existing address without changes, click Mark as valid. This option is only available for warnings, not errors.
- To manually update the address, edit the address fields, and then click Save.
Optional: To confirm the address with the customer before making changes, click Email customer. The email is prefilled with the subject
Confirm shipping address for order #XXXX. Learn more about contacting a customer about their order.Optional: To review the full validation details for the address, click View address checker.
Other
- In your Shopify admin, complete an action where address validation occurs, such as adding or editing an address on a draft order or fulfillment location. If there's an issue with an address, then a warning or error is displayed.
- In the Edit address dialog, review the summary card beside the address fields, and then resolve the issue by doing one of the following:
- To accept the suggested address, click Use suggestion.
- To keep the existing address without changes, click Mark as valid. This option is only available for warnings, not errors.
- To manually update the address, edit the address fields, and then click Save.