Drop Shipping

[Lorgan]

I am checking out different shopping carts and have heard good things about Zen Cart. Does anyone know if Zen Cart can handle drop shipping?

[kobra]

Does anyone know if Zen Cart can handle drop shipping?

Depends upon what you think "drop shipping" is???
It is only a method for one not to be required to have inventory.

It is most always NOT a "setup and forget" turn it on and it runs by itself proposition.
Those that are successful with it work hard on their relationship with their shippers and are busy every day insuring smooth orderfullfilment

[Lorgan]

Thanks for your reply. Most of my vendors will ship directly to the customer but I need to be able to get the order to them, hopefully automatically.

I also need the system to be able to accurately calculate the shipping from each of those vendors as each vendor has a different method of calculating shipping costs.

Some ship by weight, some a set price no matter the size of the package nor the amount of items in the package, and so forth.

[kobra]

Most of my vendors will ship directly to the customer but I need to be able to get the order to them, hopefully automatically.

Vendors??
How will the system know which vendor?
What if an order is comprosed of items from 3 different shippers?
Code logic to determine and separate this would be very complex.

I also need the system to be able to accurately calculate the shipping from each of those vendors as each vendor has a different method of calculating shipping costs.

Some ship by weight, some a set price no matter the size of the package nor the amount of items in the package, and so forth.

Same issues and one that only you can manually setup some weighted average.

[Lorgan]

There are systems/shopping carts that do this but they can be quite expensive. I just need to know if Zen Cart does it? Or is it a module that can be added on?

[kobra]

There are systems/shopping carts that do this but they can be quite expensive. I just need to know if Zen Cart does it?

Zen Cart is designed to do many things for many applications but by default not what you seek nor have I seen a module that would allow the dependant variables involved to be managed.
This is probably why what you have found is expensive - but if it gets one to the "Nirvana" that you describe - it is probably not expensive enough.