Using Gelato With Order Desk
This walkthrough is designed as a hands-on experience to take you through the steps of getting started with using Order Desk to send orders to Gelato.
Using these steps, you’ll manually create an order here in Order Desk, add print details to it, and send the order to Gelato’s system for fulfillment. These instructions are straightforward, but we recommend keeping the following guides handy:
Follow along with Yambo from Order Desk!
Visual learner? Watch Yambo complete the steps in this guide in the video below.
Creating a Manual Order in Order Desk
💡 If you’ve already connected your sales channel to Order Desk and have imported some orders, click here to skip to the next step. To keep things simple, it would be best to choose an order with just one item for this walkthrough.
If you don’t currently have any orders in Order Desk, you can manually create one. You’ll use the order you create to complete this activity.
Click Add New Order under the “Tools” menu in the left-hand sidebar of Order Desk.
Next, give your new order an Order ID. You’ll use this ID to find the order in your store later. For the sake of this exercise, use “Test Order 1”.
Add a complete shipping address, which should include: First and Last Name, Address 1, City, State, Postal Code, and Country.
This is the address Gelato needs to ship your order. If some of these details are missing, the order may be rejected.
Now you can add an item to the order. Order Desk differentiates inventory items by SKU, so each one must have a SKU and an Item Name. For the sake of this walkthrough, use Test Item as the Item Name and 12345 as the SKU.
Your order should now look like this. If it does, click the Save New Order button at the bottom of the page.
Once your order is saved, you’ll be redirected right to your brand-new order that can be used to test the Print on Demand process. We call this an order details page.
Getting Your Order Ready for Gelato
Gelato needs to know exactly what image you’d like them to print and which item you want them to print it on for them to be able to accept the order. Every print on demand item in the order needs to have the following fields:
- print_sku: This is the product code that Gelato uses to identify the blank items in their system.
- print_url: This is a link to the design you’d like printed on the item.
Gelato will be able to provide you a complete list of their product codes to add to the print_sku field in Order Desk, but the print_url is something you need to create yourself after storing your designs somewhere online like Dropbox.
💡 Remember, the links to your artwork files must be visible to anyone who opens the link, even if they're stored privately. If Gelato can't open the file, they can't print it!
First, you'll need to add the print_sku and print_url variations to your order item. In your order, click on the item name, then find and click the Add Variation button at the bottom of the window that pops up.
In the Name field, add print_sku. Then, in the Value field, you can use mug_product_msz_11-oz_mmat_ceramic-pink_cl_4-0 as your print_sku. That long string is Gelato’s code for a specific “item” in their system.
Next, click the Add Varation button again to create another new field. This time, add print_url in the Name field. For the print_url, you can use the following link as your value:
https://www.orderdesk.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Order-Desk-O-logo-bondi-blue.png
That's a link to the Order Desk logo, but you're welcome to use your own artwork file instead.
Once these details have been added to the item, click Save Item.
Sending the Order to Gelato
🚨 Following the steps in this section will send an actual order to Gelato. Unless you're looking at add an Order Desk mug to your coffee bar, you might want to further customize your order before submitting the order.
Now that the item in the order has all of the required details, you can send the order to Gelato. On the order page, click the Gelato button underneath the order items. If this button doesn't appear on your orders, this means that the Gelato integration isn't set up yet!
Scroll to the bottom of the order details page to find the Order History section. Here, you'll be able to monitor any changes that have been made to the order, including whether or not it was sent to Gelato successfully.
If you refresh the page shortly after clicking the button to submit the order to Gelato, you may see a record that says “Order Scheduled To Be Sent To Gelato”. This means that Order Desk has placed the order into a submission queue and it will be submitted to Gelato shortly.
You may need to wait a few seconds and refresh the page again to see the result of the order submission. If it's successful, you’ll see a new record in the Order History that says, “Order Submitted to Gelato”. This means that your order has been placed with Gelato, so you can log into your Gelato account to confirm that you see the order.
The Order History will also update if the order isn’t successfully submitted. The message will typically show an error message that Order Desk receives from Gelato that explains why their system didn't accept the order. The most common error message usually says: “Order Could Not Be Submitted to Gelato Because it was Missing Print on Demand Details”.
If you ran into any trouble while following this walkthrough, or if you have any questions about the process that weren't answered here, feel free to reach out to us at support@orderdesk.com.