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  1. #1
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    Default Question about Drop ship order processing

    I just posted a thread (http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=61870) describing a drop ship order processing question: Sorry for the double post, I thought I was in the shipping and payment module area...

    A little background:

    I have a client looking to setup a store. When they take an order from their store they will process these orders with the various drop ship suppliers they have. Most of these suppliers only support manual re-entry of orders into their store to process the orders. An obvious waste of time and potentially error prone.

    Here's the question:

    What facilities does zencart have for automating this process at least on our end, and if the supplier also uses zencart could the process be completely automated?

    Thanks for the insight and assist!

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
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    Default Re: Question about Drop ship order processing

    Quote Originally Posted by snod View Post
    I just posted a thread (http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=61870) describing a drop ship order processing question: Sorry for the double post, I thought I was in the shipping and payment module area...

    A little background:

    I have a client looking to setup a store. When they take an order from their store they will process these orders with the various drop ship suppliers they have. Most of these suppliers only support manual re-entry of orders into their store to process the orders. An obvious waste of time and potentially error prone.

    Here's the question:

    What facilities does zencart have for automating this process at least on our end, and if the supplier also uses zencart could the process be completely automated?

    Thanks for the insight and assist!
    There are several considerations. The first, and most pressing is this:-

    A customer may order SEVERAL products from you - each product may require a different drop-shipper.

    Secondly, zen cart writes the order to the database and references it against pre-configured ID's, so that when the details of the order are called up (either by the administrator, checking the order itself, or the customer doing the same in their "my account" facility) the data is represented against an order number - not by a variety of possible distribution agents. In any event, there is no inherent mechanism to separate out items in an order according to who is going to do the drop shipping.

    Thirdly, it will take quite a skilled Dbase Wizard to configure queries from the zen dbase, to have that data parsed into other systems, but an XML appropach may be a starting point. (Look at spending a few roubles here).

    Right now, I cannot see that the process you require can be "automated" by zen cart.

    To help you sort your orders more efficiently, you could use a SKU code that identifies the drop-shippers. So for example, if you have a product shipped by COMPANY A, the SKU could start with "A" eg: A-123456. Company B's products would start with "B" - eg: B-324893
    19 years a Zencart User

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
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    Default Re: Question about Drop ship order processing

    Quote Originally Posted by schoolboy View Post
    There are several considerations. The first, and most pressing is this:-

    A customer may order SEVERAL products from you - each product may require a different drop-shipper.

    Secondly, zen cart writes the order to the database and references it against pre-configured ID's, so that when the details of the order are called up (either by the administrator, checking the order itself, or the customer doing the same in their "my account" facility) the data is represented against an order number - not by a variety of possible distribution agents. In any event, there is no inherent mechanism to separate out items in an order according to who is going to do the drop shipping.

    Thirdly, it will take quite a skilled Dbase Wizard to configure queries from the zen dbase, to have that data parsed into other systems, but an XML appropach may be a starting point. (Look at spending a few roubles here).

    Right now, I cannot see that the process you require can be "automated" by zen cart.

    To help you sort your orders more efficiently, you could use a SKU code that identifies the drop-shippers. So for example, if you have a product shipped by COMPANY A, the SKU could start with "A" eg: A-123456. Company B's products would start with "B" - eg: B-324893
    Thanks for the insightful response. As always with these types of applications one question spawns another and your response highlights a number of good clues to related issues!

    I have a pretty good background with inventory control, ordering and materials management applications and if I read between the lines of your post the following thoughts come to mind:
    - I assume you mean the order has an ID number (preconfigured to format), as I suspected.
    - We have already discussed the issue of what happens when a customer orders product from multiple vendors. Based on your suggestion of a work around of identifying an SKU with an identifier, does that mean an SKU does not have a vendor/mfg field to identify a primary vendor and of course no additional fields for a product that might be available from multiple vendors (more preferable)?
    - The strategy to create a "daily ordering" report as an sql query output to XML seems pretty straightforward either using a field/fields from the SKU record joined with the SKU number field.

    Again, thanks for the post, if you can clairfy any of these thoughts, I would appreciate it, but this does give me a direction to look for further detail on the possibilities!

 

 

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