Shopify GPSR information workflow
Collect relevant product details from suppliers, review what they submit, organise supporting records, and publish eligible approved information to Shopify—while keeping legal decisions with the merchant.
Information before conclusions
Merchants selling consumer products online in the European Union may need product offers to present particular identification, contact, warning, or safety information. What applies depends on the product, the relevant economic operators, the target market, and other applicable rules.
ComplyDock helps a Shopify merchant request and organise supported information from suppliers, make explicit review decisions, and control what eligible approved information is published. It does not decide the merchant's legal obligations or treat a supplier submission as a regulatory conclusion.
Article 19 and distance sales
Article 19 of Regulation (EU) 2023/988 describes information that an online or other distance-sale offer must clearly and visibly indicate. The categories below summarise that official provision; they are not a universal checklist for every product or business.
Article 19 refers to the manufacturer's name, registered trade name or trade mark, plus the postal and electronic address at which the manufacturer can be contacted. ComplyDock supports the collection and review of manufacturer details, but the merchant determines what must be supplied and displayed.
Where the manufacturer is not established in the Union, Article 19 refers to the name, postal address, and electronic address of the responsible person under the applicable provisions. ComplyDock can manage responsible-party details; it does not appoint, supply, or verify that person.
Read the focused guide to understand the difference between the manufacturer and the EU Responsible Person under the GPSR.
The regulation refers to information allowing the product to be identified, including a picture, its type, and another product identifier. ComplyDock keeps requests tied to selected Shopify products and shows available product names, SKUs, and barcodes to suppliers. It does not decide whether those references satisfy a particular legal requirement.
Article 19 also covers warnings or safety information required by the GPSR or applicable Union harmonisation legislation, in a language consumers can easily understand as determined by the relevant Member State. ComplyDock can collect safety warnings and handling or care instructions; merchants remain responsible for applicability, wording, and language.
The supplier information gap
Manufacturer contacts, warnings, instructions, and supporting files often originate elsewhere in the supply chain. Collecting them by email can separate an answer from the product, supplier, request, and decision it belongs to.
ComplyDock's differentiator is the lifecycle around the information: ask the assigned supplier, keep the response connected to the selected products, review each submitted item, return what needs attention, and approve only what the merchant accepts.
Supplier-driven collection
The standard workflow is deterministic and request-based. Growth merchants can also use reusable custom profiles with profile requirements frozen into each request, so later profile edits do not rewrite earlier submissions.
The merchant selects an assigned supplier, relevant Shopify products, and the supported fields or document items to request.
ComplyDock issues a private, expiring link scoped to that request. The supplier does not need a Shopify or ComplyDock account.
The supplier enters the requested information and, on eligible paid plans, can provide requested supporting documents.
The merchant compares submitted values with the current record and can accept, reject, or return supported fields and documents with feedback.
Returned items can be resubmitted through a replacement secure link while already accepted fields remain locked for that correction round.
Eligible approved information can be published separately to Shopify and displayed through the configured ComplyDock theme app block.
See the complete process for collecting compliance information from Shopify suppliers.
Supporting material
On paid plans, a merchant can request eligible PDF, PNG, or JPEG supporting files alongside product information. Submitted files remain private while the merchant reviews them. Applicable issue and expiry dates can be recorded, and approved documents that are approaching or past their recorded expiry date can be surfaced in document views and merchant notifications.
Article 19 does not mean every file held in a merchant's internal workflow must be published through ComplyDock. The theme block does not expose private supporting documents, and ComplyDock does not authenticate, certify, or determine the legal suitability of an uploaded file.
Learn how product compliance documents are collected and reviewed.
Review before publication
Submitted information enters the merchant's review queue. The merchant can make field-level and document-level decisions, provide a reason when rejecting or returning an item, and request a corrected response where supported. Already accepted fields remain locked during a supplier correction round.
These are merchant review decisions—not independent findings by ComplyDock. The app does not verify that submitted information is accurate or legally sufficient.
Shopify storefront publishing
When the merchant enables storefront display and publishes an approved version, ComplyDock writes eligible approved values to an app-owned Shopify product metafield. The configured theme app block can display supported manufacturer information, responsible-party information, warnings, instructions, and eligible custom profile answers.
Publishing remains intentional and separate from collection and approval. Profiles configured for private use do not publish their profile information, and private documents are never turned into storefront downloads by the block.
Clear product boundaries