Shopify Order Printer invoice template: what it prints, and where it stops

Shopify's free Order Printer app comes with an invoice template. For many stores, that template, plus an hour of editing, is all the invoicing they need. This guide shows how to set it up, what the default template prints and leaves out, and the cases where no amount of template work will close the gap.

Everything below about the app comes from Shopify's own help pages, read on 1 October 2026: Shopify Order Printer, Creating and editing templates, Printing documents and the Liquid variables reference.

Order Printer or Order Printer (legacy)?

There are two apps with nearly the same name. The old one shows in your admin as Order Printer (legacy). Shopify says it "has been deprecated and is no longer supported or maintained", and asks merchants to migrate their templates to the new Shopify Order Printer app. If your invoice template stopped printing correctly, check which of the two you are using first: the legacy app is the usual suspect.

Both are free, both are made by Shopify, and both work the same way: a template written in HTML, CSS and Liquid, filled with the data of an order when you print it.

How to edit the invoice template

From your Shopify admin, go to Apps > Order Printer.
Click Templates, then the Invoice template.
In the Edit code section, change the HTML, CSS or Liquid.
Click Preview to check it on a real order, then Save.

You can keep up to 15 templates. If an edit goes wrong, Shopify publishes the code of the default invoice template on its help page, so you can paste it back.

To print, select up to 50 orders in Orders, then Print with Order Printer. There is no PDF export as such: the app uses your browser's print function, and you choose Save as PDF there.

What the default invoice template prints

The default invoice, in the version Shopify dates 6 June 2024, contains:

the word "Invoice", the order name (#1042) and the order date;
From: your store name and address;
Bill to and Ship to: the customer's addresses;
the lines, with quantity, title, discounts and final price;
subtotal, one tax total, shipping and total, then refunds and any outstanding amount.

For a customer who wants a printout of their order, that is a good document.

What it leaves out for an EU VAT invoice

Compare it with what an EU VAT invoice must carry (the full list, field by field) and five things are missing:

An invoice number. The template prints the order number. The variables reference lists order_number, order_name and confirmation_number, and no separate invoice series. The order number is not built for that job (why it will not do).
Your legal identity. shop.name is your store name, not necessarily the registered name of the business, and the default template prints no VAT number for you.
The buyer's VAT number, needed on B2B sales and whenever the reverse charge applies.
VAT per rate. The default shows one tax amount. An EU invoice shows the rate and the VAT amount for each rate applied.
The legal mentions your case requires, such as the reverse charge wording.

Most of this can be added. The order's tax_lines expose each rate, a VAT number can be stored in a metafield and printed, and fixed wording is just text. Expect to write Liquid, or to pay someone who does: Shopify's support will help with "minor customizations" only.

Where a template stops being the right tool

The limits that remain are not in the template. They are in the way the app works.

It prints when you ask it to. Shopify's help pages describe printing on demand, from an order you select. They describe no invoice created when an order is paid, and no archive of the invoices you printed. If your accountant asks for last March's invoices, you print them again, today, from orders that may have been edited or refunded since.

It does not send anything. The help pages describe printing, not emailing. A customer who asks for their invoice gets it from you, by hand.

It has no numbering of its own. EU rules require a unique sequential number for a full VAT invoice; national requirements also apply (the European Commission's invoicing guide). A template can print a number; it cannot keep a series, because it has nowhere to store the last number used.

A refund is a total on the same page. The template can show "Total refunded" on the original invoice. It does not produce a separate corrective document with its own number, referencing the invoice it corrects, which is how a refund on an issued invoice is normally documented.

The PDF is for people. What you save is a printout. It carries no structured data: no Factur-X, no ZUGFeRD, no UBL. That matters for B2B sales in Belgium, where structured e-invoices are required since 1 January 2026, and in France and Germany on their national schedules (the French timeline).

When Order Printer is enough

Keep the free app, with an edited template, if most of this describes you:

you print invoices on request, a few a week at most;
your customers are consumers, who rarely ask for an invoice at all;
refunds are rare, and you can handle each one by hand;
you keep your own record of the numbers you issue.

Also check, if you sell to the EU or the UK, whether Shopify's own built-in VAT invoices cover your orders: they are generated without any template work.

When an invoicing app is the better answer

An app is worth it when you need one of these:

an invoice issued automatically for every paid order, kept, and findable later;
a number series the app maintains, so no one has to;
a credit note on every refund, in its own series;
structured e-invoices for business customers in Belgium, France or Germany.

That is what InvoiceAnvil does. When an order is paid, it issues an invoice with its own gapless number; when a refund is created, a credit note in a separate series, referencing the invoice. The PDF embeds Factur-X / ZUGFeRD data (EN 16931) and is written in the buyer's language. Free for 15 invoices a month; $9/month for unlimited invoices and an automatic email of each document to the buyer; $19/month adds UBL for PEPPOL, VIES checks of VAT numbers and a monthly export for your accountant.

What InvoiceAnvil does not do

So you do not install it for the wrong reason:

It is for stores whose business is established in France, Belgium or Germany. A store based elsewhere is better served by Order Printer, Shopify's built-in invoices or another app.
It is not a printing tool. No pick lists, no packing slips: keep Order Printer for those, the two work side by side.
It creates e-invoices; it does not transmit them. Sending a structured invoice through PEPPOL or a French platform remains the job of your access point or platform.
It does not calculate tax: it reads the amounts Shopify calculated on the paid order.

The short answer

The Order Printer invoice template is a free, flexible printout of an order. With some Liquid it can carry most of the content of an EU invoice. What it cannot do is issue, number, keep and correct invoices on its own. If you print a few invoices a month, that does not matter. If invoices are part of every order, it is the reason to use an app.