Quote Originally Posted by DrByte
I like the idea of multi-vendor support, and the ability to properly quote drop-ships etc at the time of the order, not to mention the multi-warehouse inventory tracking that could be an extension of such a feature.

I also think it would be great if it were a module that could be easily added to Zen Cart as a plugin, thus allowing you to continue to enhance it without having to worry about how people would upgrade the code if they were needing to update their live site with other mods in it, etc.

I suspect that not only the checkout functions need to be extended, but also the shipping-modules likely need some additional functions in them, etc.

Keep in mind that the checkout process infrastructure is being rewritten to allow tons more flexibility. However, even with that, the steps needed to implement what you're suggesting could be maintained, just reworked to run from the right places, etc.
Absolutely, the shipping modules do need to be altered for MVS(the version I wrote for osC) now. I like the idea of it being written as a module, making it very much on it's own. I believe that would be a critical decision in the process of implementing this idea. The ckeckout process now is very isolated, in order to change anything about it, one must do major code work to accomplish it, I know, the process of writing MVS was quite a chore. But, it could be written as several different modules that relate to each step in checkout process. This would give great flexibility in working with one's checkout. I also would think this would make a faster checkout process available upon the site operator's choice. If each step were a module on it's own, one could combine them in any order(within reason of course) they chose, keep them fully separated or anything in between.

Some more detail about MVS:

As far as the customer is concerned, MVS only effects their shipping costs, but my next step is something along the lines of "Vendor Locator", a mod that finds the closest location to the customer from which a product can ship. That is the next option I plan to build into MVS.

On the Admin side, MVS uses automatic email notification to tell the Vendor that the order was placed and where to ship it. For dropshippers, this is a big timesaver. Another request I have received for this part is automated faxing, but I have not gotten deeply into investigating the "hows" of that idea.

I very much appreciate your reply and hope the Zen team will seriously consider this type of support built into ZenCart. I know that Zen's popularity would grow significantly with this addition(I know it is growing without it as well, you know what I mean). There are so many carts that claim to support dropshipping and multi-vendor, but they ALL fall short, in fact most fall FAR short of just what MVS does now.

I would like to hear(or read) any and all input on this issue, so if anyone has any thoughts, please post them.

Craig :)