If you are having any issues with student enrollments when using the Thinkific Shopify App, we have some basic troubleshooting to help.
How It Works
Before we jump into troubleshooting, let's review how a student is enrolled when using your Shopify checkout.
When you create a course in Thinkific, a product is automatically created in Shopify that is mapped to your Thinkific course. This is all automated behind the scenes, but it is very important to be aware that your Thinkific course and Shopify product are automatically mapped to each other.
When a student purchases your product in Shopify, Thinkific will look for the course that the product is currently mapped to and then enroll the student into the correct course.
Because this mapping is automated, there are some actions that will break this default mapping:
- Disconnecting and reconnecting the Thinkific Shopify App
- Deleting mapped Shopify products
Mapping Issues When Disconnecting and Reconnecting the Thinkific Shopify App
If you disconnect and reconnect the Thinkific Shopify App, the products that were originally mapped in Shopify will no longer be linked to your courses. When you reconnect, new products will be created that are correctly mapped to your courses.
However, in this case, it will appear as though you have duplicate products in Shopify. It is extremely important that you do not delete any of the newly created products as these are what will be correctly mapped. If you have deleted any of these new products by accident, please see Step 2: Make sure your course is listed in Shopify Products
If you have not deleted anything yet and just need to clean up your duplicate products in Shopify, you'll want to make sure to copy any details from your original products that you need to save. When you are ready, then only delete the oldest products:
- Log in to your Shopify Account
- Select Products
- Click Sort on the right
- Select Created (oldest first)
Now you will have the unmapped duplicate products at the top of your product list in Shopify. Make sure to only delete these oldest products.
Mapping Issues When Deleting Shopify Products
If you have deleted any of the Shopify products that were automatically created when syncing to Thinkific, your enrollments will not be successful as the course is not mapped to anything.
If you have created new products with the same name, these will also not work correctly as they have not been mapped.
If you have deleted any of these Shopify products, you'll need to re-list the courses in Shopify to make sure you have a product and course that are correctly mapped to each other.
See how to resolve that here: Step 2: Make sure your course is listed in Shopify Products
Troubleshooting Enrollments
If the above scenarios don't appear to be what you are experiencing, the following troubleshooting steps will cover what to check for if a student is not enrolled in your course after they purchase your Shopify product.
Step 1: Check if the student exists in Thinkific
Before moving on, it's important to check if the student was actually created in Thinkific.
How To Check if the Student Exists in Thinkific:
- Click Thinkific Admin to visit your Thinkific Admin Dashboard
- Go to Support Your Students
- Select Users
- Scroll through the Users page or use the search bar to locate the student
If the student is on your Users page, then you'll want to check if they were successfully enrolled in the course:
- Click on the student's name from the Users page
- Check if they have any active enrollments
If you can see that they have an active enrollment in the correct course like the example above, it is likely they just missed the Site Welcome Email. Check out our Site Welcome Email troubleshooting steps here.
If there is no active enrollment, continue to Step 2.
Step 2: Make sure your course is listed in Shopify Products
If you don't see a student enrolled after completing the Shopify checkout, it's possible that your Shopify product is not linked to your Thinkific course due to one of the scenarios described above.
How to Check if Your Course is Listed
- Go to https://shopific.thinkific.com/index
- Look for a Not listed label
If you see this label, it means there is no Shopify product currently mapped to your Thinkific course. You'll need to select List on Shopify products to automatically create a new product in Shopify that is mapped to this course:
- Make sure you are still on https://shopific.thinkific.com/index
- On the Not listed course, click the ellipses (3 dot icon)
- Click List on Shopify products
This will push the course to Shopify. The Not listed label will disappear from this page and you will now have a product with the same name as your course in Shopify under Products:
Step 3: Make sure email, first name and last name are required fields
Students signing up on Thinkific require an email address, first name, and last name to create an account. You'll need to make sure these fields are required in your Shopify checkout to ensure your students are successfully created in Thinkific.
See how to update your checkout form here: Shopify Checkout Form Requirements
Step 4: Check Payments are set to 'Automatically Capture' in Shopify
You want to make sure that your payments in Shopify are set to Automatically Capture, rather than Manually Capture. Setting your payments to Automatically Capture ensures your student's orders are processed right away.
See how to check and set this up here: Payment authorization and capture
Step 5: Disconnect and Reconnect the Thinkific App in Shopify
If your course is listed and it is a product in Shopify but you are still having issues with enrollments, disconnecting and reconnecting your Thinkific account can help. However, we only recommend disconnecting Thinkific from Shopify if you are just setting up your account.
This is because if you disconnect Thinkific from Shopify, the original mapping of Thinkific courses to Shopify products will break. If you reconnect, new products will be created in Shopify that are mapped to your Thinkific courses. The original products will no longer work.
If you have already created products and have completed orders, make sure to save a backup of this before proceeding. When disconnecting, you will lose the following:
- Products in Shopify including product descriptions and prices (this applies to the originally mapped products)
- Previous orders of those Shopify products
- Any Shopify URLs associated with the product
You can see details on how to disconnect here Shopify App: How to Disconnect and Reconnect Your Thinkific Account.
If you are not sure or have a lot of products already set up, please continue to Step 6: Contact Thinkific Support
Step 6: Contact Thinkific Support
If enrollments are still not successful or you have already customized your products and the mapping needs to be updated, please send us an email with the following:
- Description of the issue
- Name of the course(s) affected
- The product URL from Shopify for each course affected (see instructions below)
If you have issues with multiple courses, please send us the information in a table so that we can easily check how your courses are mapped in our database:
| Name of Course | Shopify product URL |
| Input course name here | Paste copied URL from the instructions below here |
| Add additional courses here... |
How to Copy the Shopify Product URL
- In Shopify, go to Products
- Click on the product name
- Copy the URL from the browser bar