REALLY simple drop ship requirement?

[stux]

I have a single "3rd party supplier" that I would like to be able to take orders for via my store (we have a commision agreement). The REALLY simple bit is that I do not need to accept payment, I don't need to calculate shipping, I simply need to relay (via email) the customer details (shipping address, phone number etc) and the order details themselves.

Once the email is sent the rest is down to the supplier. It IS possible that my customers may have bought other items on the same order but I can work without this

Thoughts?

Stux
v1.3.8-clean build- no add ons (yet)

[kobra]

I would take the payments on your site - forward only the order to the shipper and pay them yourself

[stux]

Thanks Cobra but our relationship requires the drop shipper to handle the payment. Their fee's include free delivery so there is nothing complex to calculate. The MOST complicated would be an order with some of our items and some from the drop shipper. From what I've read this should be possible within ZC so would appreciate a steer

Thanks

Stux

[schoolboy]

Forget about the technology for a minute and think of the practical challenges you face.

1. How does your system separate out YOUR products from the DROPSHIP products. Yours need payment and shipping, but the dropship ones don't.

2. How do customers then pay for the dropship products if their order is a combination of both yours and dropship. They pay YOU and then they pay SOMEONE ELSE. That would pi$$ most people off.

3... there are many more... just think for a few minutes...

Then, programming zc to behave in a way that can separate out products and split the order for calculation purposes is a massive challenge...

Good Luck...

PS: this is a REALLY challenging drop ship requirement

[kobra]

our relationship requires the drop shipper to handle the payment

So they do not increased business sent from you?
What you describe is not a relationship...
Why do they care?
You forward and PAY upfront then they send orders to addresses you provide......

[schoolboy]

I would agree with Kobra... your agreement with them is very one-sided (in THEIR favor). This is not the typical way drop-shippers work.

But that aside... you will have great difficulty configuring ANY webcart to function the way you need it... not just zencart...

[stux]

thanks for the concern both technical and for the relationship.

In fact the relationship works very well. It is actually based on us receiving a percentage of every order ordered via us and every subsequent order shipped to clients introduced via us - granted there is a certain "reconciliation trust" required but it currently works well and trust does still exist. Two local businesses with a mutually benficial relationship. We provide access to a well qualiified set of clients and they pay a percentage or every order. It works

Technically I thought it would be more straight forward. If I restrict an order than includes the shippers products to just those products then (via whatever means) can I automatically send an email to the shipper with the order details. No payment , no shipping calculations SIMPLY the client address and product details?

Thanks again

[CoolCarPartsOnline]

Again as mentioned above is it going to be worth it to go through the customization for Zen Cart to do that? There is nothing impossible in Open Source software but you have to look it from financial side. Is that relation worth going through the headache of finding a developer, pay them (at least $1000) to build the integration and maybe loosing a few customers who wouldn't like spliting their payment and so on....

If your business partner offer things you don't have and they complement your product, you are better of signing up for an affiliate account and just send them the customer so they can deal with the customer service.

There is a Purchase order mod for Zen Cart that I use for drop shipping order which you can use to assign products to drop shipper, you can set it up to automatically send the order information to the drop shipper, but then you would have to send them the payment seperatly or they can bill you monthly or weekly.