The barter & Shopify order glossary: every D2C term, defined

Barter and creator collaborations come with their own vocabulary — half marketing, half Shopify operations. If you run barter for a D2C brand or an agency, here are the terms you'll actually hit, defined in plain English. Jump in anywhere.

Barter & creator terms

Barter order

An order a brand places for a creator in exchange for content or reach, not money. The creator pays nothing, so the order is effectively a 100% discount. Placing these in bulk on Shopify is exactly what Orqis automates.

Influencer seeding

Sending product to many creators at once — “seeding” the market — hoping some post organically. High volume, low touch: a brand might seed dozens or hundreds of creators a month, each needing a real Shopify order.

Gifting

Sending free product as a gift (to creators, VIPs, press, or employees) with no formal content obligation. Mechanically identical to barter on Shopify: a $0 order that still has to be created and shipped.

Collaboration (collab) order

An order tied to a specific creator partnership — could be barter (free) or a paid collaboration with a discount. The order placement is the same; only the discount changes.

PR package / PR list

The list of people a brand sends product to for PR — creators, journalists, stylists. The “PR list” is usually a spreadsheet of names, handles and addresses that someone then has to turn into Shopify orders.

Shopify order terms

Draft order

An order you build manually in Shopify before it's placed — add products, set a customer, apply a discount — then “complete” it. It's the manual path most teams use for barter, one at a time. See our guide on draft orders at scale.

Order vs draft order

A draft order is a work-in-progress; completing it (or creating an order directly) produces a real order that can be fulfilled. Orqis creates orders directly rather than completing drafts, which avoids a checkout-gating error on some store plans.

100% discount / $0 / zero-dollar order

An order whose total is zero because a 100% discount (or a fixed discount equal to the subtotal) was applied. The standard way to record a free barter order while keeping the real product value on the books. See how to place 100% discount orders.

Discount: percentage vs fixed amount

A percentage discount takes X% off; a fixed amount takes a set value off. For barter you want 100% (or a fixed amount equal to the subtotal); for paid collabs, a percentage or fixed amount.

Financial status (paid / pending)

Whether Shopify considers the order paid. A $0 barter order has nothing to charge, so teams mark it paid (comped) or pending— either is fine, as long as it's consistent.

Inventory behaviour (decrement vs bypass)

Whether placing an order reduces stock. Many teams bypassinventory checks for barter so an out-of-stock SKU doesn't block the order, then reconcile stock separately.

Variant

A specific version of a product — size, shade, scent. Every order line needs the right variant, which is why matching a free-text SKU from a sheet to the correct Shopify variant is half the battle.

SKU

Stock Keeping Unit — the code identifying a product/variant. In barter sheets, SKUs are usually free text (“Vit C serum 30ml”), which has to be matched to the real Shopify SKU.

Fuzzy SKU matching

Matching a messy, free-text product name to the right Shopify product/variant even when it doesn't match exactly. Orqis does this automatically so you're not hunting variants by hand for every line.

Order tag

A label on an order (e.g. barter, seeding-jun) used to filter and report. Orqis tags every order it places so you can find them later and so retries never duplicate.

Idempotent / exactly-once

A guarantee that re-running an action doesn't repeat it. An idempotent order queue places each order exactly once — even after a crash, timeout, or retry — so you never double-send free product.

Fulfilment & logistics

Fulfilment

Picking, packing and shipping a placed order. Orqis places the order; your normal fulfilment flow ships it.

RTO (Return to Origin)

When a shipment can't be delivered and comes back — often due to a wrong or incomplete address. Clean address parsing (street, city, state, PIN, phone) directly reduces RTOs on barter shipments.

COD vs prepaid

Cash on Delivery vs paid upfront. Barter orders are $0/prepaid (comped), so COD doesn't apply — but the address still has to be courier-ready.

India-specific terms

PIN code

India's 6-digit postal code. Essential for delivery; Orqis extracts and validates it from messy single-cell addresses so orders ship to the right place.

Single-cell address

A whole address crammed into one spreadsheet cell — name, street, area, city, state, PIN and phone all together. Orqis parses it into structured fields automatically.

Tooling & model terms

Multi-tenant / workspace per brand

A tool that keeps each brand's data, store and team fully separate while you work from one console. It's what lets an agency run barter for ten brands without ten disconnected tools — and it works just as well for a single brand.

Bulk order placement

Creating many Shopify orders in one run from a list, instead of one at a time. The core of what Orqis does — read the full guide.

Put the terms to work

That's the vocabulary of Shopify barter ops. If you're living these terms every day — turning a PR list into hundreds of $0 orders by hand — that's exactly the grind Orqis removes. Book a demo to see it on your store.