Your reservations can trigger the rest of your stack. A reservation is created, and your team's channel gets a message. A deposit is paid, and the customer gets tagged for your VIP segment. Stock arrives for someone who's been waiting, and your reporting sheet updates itself. Reservo fires eight Shopify Flow triggers on reservation events, and this guide covers where to find them, what each fires on, and a few workflows worth copying.
Flow triggers are part of the Automation plan. You'll also need Shopify Flow itself, Shopify's free automation app.
Where to find the triggers
This is the question we're asked most, because the answer isn't obvious: the triggers don't appear in the Shopify admin's Flow template library. You find them inside the Flow app while building a workflow:
- Install Shopify Flow from the App Store if you haven't already.
- Open Flow and click Create workflow.
- Click Select a trigger and search "reservation". The Reservo triggers appear in the list.
The eight triggers
| Trigger | Fires when |
|---|---|
| Reservation created | A new reservation is created, online or at POS. |
| Reservation completed | A reservation is completed, the customer collected and the sale went through. |
| Reservation cancelled | A reservation is cancelled. |
| Reservation expired | A reservation expires uncollected and its stock returns to sale. |
| Payment received | A payment is taken against a reservation, such as a deposit at POS. |
| Stock received for reservation | Stock arrives for a variant that has unallocated units waiting in an active reservation. |
| Reservation item ready for collection | A single line item's awaiting-stock units have all been allocated and that item is now ready to collect. |
| Reservation ready for collection | Every awaiting-stock item on a reservation has been fulfilled and the whole reservation is ready. |
The last three are the waitlist's nervous system: they fire as incoming stock works through the queue (see the waitlist guide).
Each trigger carries the reservation's details into your workflow: the reference, the customer, whether it was made in person or online, the location, the items, the reason, and more. You can branch on any of it. Conditions like "only online reservations" or "only at the Soho store" are one step.
Workflows worth copying
Tell the team in their channel, not their inbox. Reservation created, plus a condition for the location, sends a message where your staff actually look. Useful if the staff email goes to a shared inbox nobody watches on busy days.
Tag the customers who reserve. Reservation created, then Flow's add-customer-tag action. Your reservers become a segment you can see in Shopify and use in your email platform. Tag on Payment received instead and you've got a list of customers who put money down, your most committed buyers.
Catch the ones who didn't collect. Reservation expired, then tag the customer or notify staff. An expired hold is a customer who wanted the item and didn't make it in. That's a follow-up, not a loss, and without a trigger nobody notices it happened.
Watch the queue clear. Stock received for reservation tells you arrivals are landing against real demand. Reservation ready for collection is the moment to brief the shop floor that a pickup is coming.
Feed your reporting. Reservation completed, with the reference and location, into a spreadsheet row or your reporting tool. Reservation-to-sale conversion becomes a number you track instead of a feeling.
One boundary: these are triggers, not actions. Flow can't reach back and create or change a reservation; it reacts to what reservations do. Everything downstream, tagging, messaging, spreadsheets, email platforms, uses Flow's own actions and the hundreds of app actions in its library.
In this simple example, the flow tags the customer with 'reservation-customer' when a reservation is created. Once tagged, marketing can segment the customer and them to any relevant communications or reports.
Common questions
I'm on Automation but can't see the triggers.
Check you're looking in the right place: inside the Flow app's trigger picker when creating a workflow, not the admin's template library. If Flow isn't installed, install it first; the triggers only appear within Flow.
Do the triggers cost anything to run?
No. Shopify Flow is free, and the triggers are included in the Automation plan.
Can Flow create or edit reservations?
No. Reservo provides triggers only. Reservations are created at POS, on your storefront, and managed in the app.
Does "Stock received" fire for any restock?
No, only when the arriving variant has unallocated units waiting in an active reservation. Ordinary restocks with nobody waiting don't fire it.