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?
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?
Depends upon what you think "drop shipping" is???Does anyone know if Zen Cart can handle drop shipping?
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
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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.
Vendors??Most of my vendors will ship directly to the customer but I need to be able to get the order to them, hopefully automatically.
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.
Same issues and one that only you can manually setup some weighted average.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.
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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?
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.There are systems/shopping carts that do this but they can be quite expensive. I just need to know if Zen Cart does it?
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.
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Do a search for "drop shipping". I saw that someone has compiled a module that claims to cater for some of the complex requirements of drop shipping, but I can't recall who did this.
In general, handling drop-shipping from multiple vendors is very complex as not only do they have different policies, systems and fulfilment arrangements, but as Kobra said... How will you "split" orders to inform different drop shippers, when a customer orders several products - each from a different drop shipper?
Add to this the potential for irate customers when they discover that the delivery charges may be several times higher than they expect (each shipper will charge a fee for delivery - order 3 products from 3 suppliers = 3 times the shipping charge!)
No shopping cart can resolve this as it is a functional issue (not a software issue).
So it's not just getting the order to each drop shipper... your ZC installation will ALSO have to split the order BEFORE all its constituent parts are forwarded to your suppliers AND it will have to calculate and apply each supplier's shipping fees, policies and formats. Some shippers use several methods. If the consignments are "signed for", your customer will have to be available to sign 3 separate delivery acceptances - and there's no guarantee that these will all arrive on the same day.
Very difficult and probably not worth it as customers are likely to rapidly abandon your site when they see that shipping the goods is more costly and problematic than a space shuttle flight!
We've been drop shipping with Zen Cart for over a year now. We have 6 different vendors, although most of that year has been only 3 vendors. Yes, sometimes it can be difficult with the shipping and we will occasionally lose a little on shipping when an order has products from 2 vendors. For us, our vendors carry products that are different enough that we hardly ever get orders including products from more than one vendor, but as we are adding more products from the 3 newer vendors this will change and we'll run into this more. It's not such a big deal when you are selling bigger ticket items, but drop shipping $10 items from 3 vendors in 1 order would make you lose money consistently!
It also depends on how you are approaching reaching your customers. We, for the most part, are going for the "long tail", the lesser searched but more specific keyword strings. So many of our customers are coming to the site with a specific product in mind, and right now we have 2800+ products and will eventually have over 45,000 once they are all added. For us, everything is working well even though many folks on the forums will say that multiple drop shipping is too complex.
So, from my experience, Zen Cart cannot handle drop shipping the way that you described, not just the default install. BUT, there is a drop shipper purchase order mod in the downloads. This will send emails to each vendor with the customer details, products, shipping method, etc and will split out different vendors in one order. It is not automatic but it's a very simple interface in the admin. I am currently looking into automating this by modifying the code.
AND, there is a commercial module called Advanced Shipper by Ceon, search for the user ceon and you should be able to get to their site or Google it, I don't think I am allowed to post a link. This mod allows you to configure shipping by product, category or manufacturer so you can set up different rules for your different vendors. I just came across it yesterday and have been playing around with their live demo to see if it's what I want before plonking down the $, but it's very very resonably priced and seems very robust. The author is very helpful when you have a question. I am 95% sure that we are about to purchase it to deal with little issues that are losing us sales. For instance, one vendor charges a $5 drop ship fee on top of shipping and handling. Default ZC can allow me to add a handling fee to UPS or whatever, but then it's across the board. So, another vendor that doesn't charge the fee still is getting it added to the shipping rate, and since we sell a lot of small items from this vendor we are losing sales because the shipping is coming back so high compared to the cart value. So the Advanced Shipper will pay for itself quickly!!
So, between the free drop ship purhcase order mod and the Advanced Shipper mod you can do multiple vendor drop shipping pretty straightforwardly.
If you are not a coder, you can post in the commercial help wanted section to modify the drop ship PO module to be automatic if you can't wait for me or someone else to do it for free(I'm not sure how long it will take me ).
Having been at it for over a year, I can attest that it is possible to use Zen Cart with a multiple drop shipping situation but it's not fully automated(yet!).
I think this is one of the most useful and comprehensive posts I have seen regarding zencart and dropshipping. Thaks so much for letting us know of your experiences.
I can also vouch for Conor Kerr (ceon). I had forgotten about his Advanced Shipper module, but I agree... if there is a way to handle complex shipping with multiple suppliers, then Conor's module is probably it.
And as it solves practically every shipping conundrum, it's well worth the tiny charge he makes for it.
www.dev.ceon.net
Thanks for saying that, and your welcome!
I am just getting into the Advanced Shipper module and I am really really impressed by how flexible it is for complex shipping scenarios. It is the answer to every drop shipper's shipping prayer, you can even set the zip/postal code for each vendor to get super accurate rates. This will take our drop shipping enterprise to a whole new level as we are going to be able to convert the majority of our lost sales, which are mainly due to the relatively rigid one-rule-fits-all shipping rules of the default ZC.
I really love Zen Cart, it is so powerful and flexible and we have had great success with it, and without this incredible community I would not have been able to realize my ecommerce dreams! I don't have a lot of experience with other carts apart from giving them a good test spin and digging into the code of a few, but I would recommend to the OP that they use ZC for their drop ship cart system, it really can't be beat once you make a few small changes.
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