Shopify app manual

• A Shopify store on any plan, with a theme that supports app blocks (any Online Store 2.0 theme — Dawn and every modern theme qualify).
• No DTF Pilot account needed in advance. Installing the app creates your account, issues your license and drops your starter credit in automatically.
• Admin access to your Shopify store (to install apps and edit the theme).

1. Open the listing: DTF Pilot: Gang Sheet Builder on the Shopify App Store, and press Install.
2. Shopify shows the permission screen. The app asks to read and write products and orders — to attach the finished gang sheet to the order line and, optionally, to tag orders once their files are downloaded — and to work with fulfilment orders, which is how Flight Deck marks an order fulfilled with its tracking number after buying a label. Press Install app.
3. You land in the app's admin page inside Shopify. Behind the scenes your DTF Pilot account and license key were created the moment the install completed — nothing to sign up for, nothing to paste.
4. The dashboard shows your credit balance (with the free starter credit already applied) and your license key.

What just got installed

• The embedded admin page (Apps → DTF Pilot) — balance, top-ups, license, and the print file for each order.
• A theme app extension containing the gang sheet builder block — installed but not yet placed on a page. That's chapter 4.

The builder attaches to a normal Shopify product; that product's price is what the customer is charged per unit.

1. In Shopify admin go to Products → Add product.
2. Name it what customers search for — “DTF Gang Sheet”, “Custom Transfer Sheet”.
3. Set the price to your rate per unit: per foot for roll sheets, or per sheet in fixed-size mode. (Volume tiers are covered in chapter 7.)
4. Under Inventory, uncheck Track quantity — gang sheets are made to order and shouldn't run out of stock.
5. Under Shipping, leave This is a physical product ticked so shipping rates apply normally.
6. Save.

This is the one step that touches your theme — and it's done entirely in Shopify's visual editor, no code.

1. Go to Online Store → Themes → Customize.
2. In the top dropdown (which usually says “Home page”), choose Products → Default product — or select the specific gang sheet product so the builder only appears there.
3. In the left panel, under the product section, click Add block.
4. Choose Gang Sheet Builder under the Apps heading.
5. Drag it where you want it — most shops place it directly above the Add to cart button.
6. Click the block to open its settings and fill in the sheet rules (chapter 5).
7. Press Save, then view the product on your storefront. The builder button appears with the label you chose.

Click the Gang Sheet Builder block in the theme editor to configure it:

All measurements are in inches. Save the theme after changing them — the storefront picks the new rules up immediately.

Shopify prices by quantity, so DTF Pilot maps a gang sheet onto that model cleanly: quantity = the billable units (feet of length, or number of fixed sheets) and the variant price = your price per unit.

A 6-foot sheet at $7/ft therefore reaches the cart as quantity 6 at $7 — $42, in Shopify's own numbers, with no custom scripts and no draft orders. It works on every Shopify plan and behaves normally in discounts, taxes and reports.

To give better rates on bigger sheets, name the product's variants by unit range — the app reads those ranges and charges the matching per-unit price.

1. Edit the product and add a variant option (call it “Volume”).
2. Name each variant as a range: 1-9 ft, 10-24 ft, 25+ ft. For fixed sheets use sheet counts: 1-4 sheets, 5+ sheets.
3. Set each variant's price to the per-unit rate for that range — e.g. $7.00, $6.25, $5.50.
4. Save. The builder now quotes the right tier as the sheet grows, and the cart uses the matching variant automatically.

1. Open Apps → DTF Pilot in your Shopify admin.
2. Find the order — each gang sheet line shows its dimensions and whether it has been downloaded yet.
3. Press Download print file for the full-resolution 300 DPI production file, composited in the cloud.
4. Download again (free) re-fetches anything you've already paid for.

Running several stores, or want this automated? Flight Deck pulls files for every store into RIP-ready folders and can tag orders once they're downloaded.

Everything is prepaid and billed through Shopify's own billing — it appears on your regular Shopify invoice, with no separate card.

• Buy credit: in the app admin, pick a credit package and press Buy this package. Shopify shows its approval screen; approving returns you to the app with the balance updated.
• Automatic top-ups: switch on Top up automatically when the balance runs low so production never stops mid-run. You approve it once, and you set a monthly cap as a safety limit — the app can never exceed it.
• Change the cap any time from the same panel.

Flight Deck (free, Mac & Windows) connects to your Shopify stores automatically — they appear on your license, so there are no API keys to create.

• Every Shopify and WooCommerce store lands in one order queue.
• Auto-download can pull new orders' sheets as they arrive.
• Because Shopify has no custom order statuses, Flight Deck can tag downloaded orders instead (e.g. sheets-downloaded) — filter by that tag in Shopify admin to see what's already at the printer.
• When Flight Deck buys a shipping label, it marks the order fulfilled with the tracking number, so the order leaves your Unfulfilled queue and the customer's order-status page fills in. Shopify's own shipping-confirmation email is optional.

Setup details are in the Flight Deck manual.

This happens by itself — there is nothing to set up. When you install the app, Shopify tells us the store owner's email address. If that email already has a DTF Pilot account (because you signed up for Builder Pro, or you run a WooCommerce store), the new Shopify store is attached to that account automatically.

You end up with one login that sees every store, instead of a second account and a second key to keep track of.

It works in either order

• Account first, Shopify later — the store joins your existing account the moment the app is installed.
• Shopify first, account later — signing up on dtfpilot.com with the same email claims the account we already created for your store. You set a password and your store is already there. (You'll never see “an account with this email already exists”.)

Stores installed before this shipped get attached automatically the next time you open the app.

What linking does and doesn't change

• Does: one portal login, all your stores in one place, combined reporting, and one identity for support.
• Doesn't: each store keeps its own balance, its own plan and its own billing. Your Shopify store still buys credit through Shopify billing exactly as before — no money moves anywhere.

The builder block isn't in the “Add block” list

Make sure you're editing a product template (not the home page) and that your theme is Online Store 2.0. On an older vintage theme, app blocks don't exist — switching to a modern theme is the fix; email support if that isn't an option.

The button doesn't appear on the storefront

• Confirm you pressed Save in the theme editor after adding the block.
• Check you added it to the template that this product actually uses (product templates can differ per product).
• Hard-refresh the product page — theme assets cache for a few minutes.

Uploads fail in the builder

Usually a network layer between the shopper's browser and cloud storage — corporate filtering, a VPN, or a browser extension. The builder automatically retries through a secondary route, so persistent failures are worth reporting with the store domain and rough time so we can trace them.

Prices in the cart don't match the builder

Check your variant range names (chapter 7) — a typo like “10 - 24ft” instead of 10-24 ft makes the app fall back to the highest-priced variant. Also confirm the product price is your per-unit rate, not a whole-sheet price.

Billing approval didn't come back

If you approved a top-up but the balance didn't update within a minute, reopen the app — crediting is idempotent and reconciles on load. If it still looks wrong, email support with the approximate time; nothing is lost.

Uninstalling

Removing the app stops the builder and the order panel. Your license and credit balance survive — reinstalling reconnects to the same account, and your paid-for files stay re-downloadable from Flight Deck's Exports tab.