Why it exists
A rule stops a bad order at checkout, and for most carts that is the whole job. But some blocked carts are worth more than a block. A cart three times your usual size is often a wholesale buyer in the retail flow. A reseller repeatedly hitting a per-customer cap is an account worth tagging. A stock level falling is a reason to tighten a maximum before anyone notices.
Automations hands that moment to Shopify Flow, which already has hundreds of actions for email, Slack, customer tags and draft orders. There is no reason for Prime MOQ to rebuild any of them.
What Flow does not do
Flow does not block anything, and it cannot. Enforcement is entirely the job of your rules and the Shopify Function that reads them, described in How limits are enforced at checkout. That runs on every plan, and it runs identically whether Automations is on, off, or never set up.
Flow reacts after the fact. This is worth being clear about before you build anything, because a workflow designed on the assumption that Flow is part of the enforcement chain will not do what you expect.
Where to find it
Open Automations from the Prime MOQ sidebar, after Rules and Design. The page has three parts:
| Part | What it is |
|---|---|
| Send blocked orders to Shopify Flow | The toggle that starts sending events |
| Workflow templates | Four ready-made chains you can install or adapt |
| Recent activity | Every event sent, or skipped, with the reason |
Turn on event sending
Build your workflow first, or install a template. See Ready-made workflow templates. Turning the toggle on before a workflow exists sends events that nothing is listening for.
Open Automations and switch on "Send blocked orders to Shopify Flow".
Watch the activity log to confirm events are arriving as expected. See Reading the Flow activity log.
Rate limits
Outbound events are capped at 100 workflow starts per hour, and repeat blocks from the same shopper within a short window count once. A frustrated customer clicking Add to cart six times does not start six workflow runs.
If you go over the hourly cap, the page shows a banner telling you how many events did not start a workflow that hour.
What you get on the free plan
The whole page: every template, every trigger and action chain, and the activity log. Only two things need Pro, the send toggle itself and clicking Install on a template.
That is deliberate. You can see exactly what Automations would do for your store before deciding whether it is worth upgrading for.
Common mistakes
- Turning the toggle on before building a workflow. Events arrive with nothing to react to them.
- Expecting Flow to block something. It cannot, and it does not need to.
- Assuming the free plan sees nothing. It sees everything on this page.
- Installing a template and stopping there. A Flow workflow is off by default after import, and the send toggle is a separate switch.