Meet customer demand using SKULabs' flexible and reliable methods of managing dropshipped orders and items.
Integration with sales channel settings
Whenever possible, it's ideal for your sales channel to be in charge of directing dropshipped items to the appropriate supplier. This is especially handy for products that are always dropshipped, since there is no decision making to be done based on stock availability or shipping cost.
Some sales channels offer built-in support for dropshipping and can communicate with your suppliers as soon as orders with dropshipped products are placed. For example, Shopify offers custom fulfillment services that allow you to link products to third-party fulfillment services.
SKULabs recognizes when these fulfillment services are responsible for dropshipping order items and will hide those from view during picking and shipping. That way, your team can focus on just the items they need to ship out of your warehouse.
How to create a dropship order
1. Open any order and scroll down the page to the Dropships and purchase orders panel, then click the "Create dropship or backorder" button.
2. Change the Ship to field to "Customer (dropship)".
Next, choose the dropship supplier per item, quantity, unit, and rate, then click save to create the dropship PO.
Fulfilling dropshipped orders
Supplier emails sent to suppliers within SKULabs contain two links for your supplier to use:
One link for acknowledging receipt of the purchase order.
A second link for submitting a tracking number of the shipment sent to your customer.
Manually apply tracking information for a dropship po
If your supplier does not enter tracking information on the dropship po email, you can manually add tracking information to the dropship po.
Open the order.
Scroll to the Dropship and purchase orders panel
Click the + icon under the "Tracking" column to enter in tracking information.
When a tracking number is entered for a dropship po:
A shipment notification including the tracking number is sent to the sales channel
The order's status is modified accordingly in SKULabs.
The status of the PO is set to closed.
Setting up dropshipping suppliers
SKULabs maintains a list of suppliers that you order goods from in our Purchasing section. Suppliers can have custom part numbers and prices for the items you purchase from them, and you can easily create purchase orders from other parts of SKULabs, such as the Items list and Orders list.
Suppliers can also be utilized for dropshipping workflows. If you rely on a supplier frequently for dropshipping, here are some steps to make dropshipping easier:
Visit the Inventory Settings page and fill in the Purchase Order Emails settings and verify your e-mail address.
Visit the Suppliers page and select Add supplier to set up the new supplier.
Enter the contact information and communication settings for the supplier.
(Optional) If you receive regular inventory updates from this supplier regarding inventory available for dropshipping, create a Warehouse for use as the Supplier Warehouse.
Dropshipping automation
Many sellers will always dropship orders when the destination is a particular region, or based on other order criteria. In many of these cases, dropshipping can be automated through the use of shipping rules:
For most filters and actions, shipping rules will trigger as soon as an order syncs into SKULabs, assuming the order meets the criteria specified. For further assistance automating your dropshipping workflows, please contact our support team.