How channels work
A channel is a place your organisation sells. Every order belongs to one, so every organisation has at least one from the day it is created.
Two kinds
A manual channel has no store behind it. Orders are typed into Yessort rather than arriving from anywhere, and there is nothing to keep in step. Every new organisation is given one of these, named Manual, because an order has to be placed against a channel and a brand-new organisation would otherwise have nothing to choose. It is set to GBP; change it in the channel's settings if that is wrong for you.
A Shopify channel is created when you connect a Shopify store, and is tied to that store for its lifetime. Yessort lists products there, tells it how much stock to display, and takes in the orders it sends back.
The channel and the connection are separate things
Behind every Shopify channel is a connection — the record holding the credentials that let Yessort talk to the store. They are deliberately not the same object.
The connection holds how to reach the store. The channel holds what selling there means: the currency, which price list drives the prices you publish, which site orders default to, and which trading brand orders render under.
The practical consequence is that two Shopify stores are two connections and two channels, even if they sell exactly the same products. Each gets its own currency, its own price list and its own settings. A manual channel has no connection at all, which is precisely what makes it manual.
What a channel decides
| Setting | What it affects |
|---|---|
| Currency | The currency of prices and orders on this channel |
| Default price list | Which prices Yessort publishes to the store |
| Default site | Where orders allocate from when nothing says otherwise |
| Trading brand | The brand orders from this channel render under |
| Publish mode | Whether every variant is listed automatically, or only ones you pick |
| Default payment method | Used when an incoming payment's gateway matches nothing you have mapped |
Customer-account and customer-group price overrides still apply on top, and are worked out when the order arrives rather than when the price is published. The full list is in channel settings fields.
One organisation, several channels
An organisation can run as many channels as it needs, and they do not interfere with each other. A variant can be listed on one, several or none. Taking it off sale on one leaves it on sale on the others.
A channel is either active or inactive. An inactive channel stays visible so you can see its history and settings, but takes no new orders and syncs nothing.
Where the screens live
Connecting a store, and editing a channel's settings, are organisation administration — both live under your organisation's Integrations settings and need organisation-admin access.
The everyday queues do not. The channel review queue and the coverage matrix sit in the main workspace under Catalogue, because they are cleared daily rather than configured once.