Drop Shipping: How to Manage Orders

Drop shipping requires three major data integrations between the retailer and the supplier: product catalog, inventory, and orders. 

Product catalog is the collection of descriptive data—title, brand, category, attributes, images—of that physical thing.

Inventory is the data that tells you where the item is, how many there are, and what they cost you as the reseller.

An order is where the rubber hits the road. A consumer has purchased a product that a retailer was selling virtually and now that order and fulfillment information needs to be sent from the retailer to the supplier, which physically has the product to ship to the consumer.

Order Exchange

The drop shipping order process is a two-way street. It’s an exchange of data back and forth between a retailer and a supplier. Catalog and inventory are based on a supplier publishing information that a retailer consumes. Orders are created by the retailer for consumption by the supplier, and then there’s a secondary fulfillment process from the supplier back to the retailer) of an order being acknowledged and shipped or canceled.

What follows is a list of the basic order data that should be provided by a retailer to a supplier:

• po_number. The unique order identifier generated by the retailer’s ordering system.
• line_item_sku. The SKU being ordered.
• line_item_title. The title of the SKU being ordered.
• line_item_quantity. The quantity being ordered.
• line_item_expected_cost. The cost that the retailer expects to pay for the given SKU.
• line_item_consumer_price. The price that the retailer charged their customer for the given SKU.
• ship_attention. The name or title of the customer to whom the order is being shipped.
• ship_first_name. First name of the customer to whom the order is being shipped.
• ship_last_name. Last name of the customer to whom the order is being shipped.
• ship_company. The customer’s company name to whom the order is being shipped.
• ship_address_1. Address 1 line of the customer to whom the order is being shipped.
• ship_address_2. Address 2 line of the customer to whom the order is being shipped.
• ship_city. Shipping city of the customer to whom the order is being shipped.
• ship_region. Shipping region of the customer to whom the order is being shipped.
• ship_postal. Shipping postal code of the customer to whom the order is being shipped.
• ship_country. Shipping country of the customer to whom the order is being shipped, using the two-character ISO country code.
• ship_phone. Phone number of the customer to whom the order is being shipped.
• ship_email. Email address of the customer to whom the order is being shipped.
• ship_carrier. The name of the carrier that is preferred to be used for this order. Options could include FedEx, UPS, and USPS.
• ship_method. Shipping method requested. Only those options supported by the supplier will be supported.
• signature_required_flag. Is a signature required upon delivery?
• ship_instructions. Allows for specific direction when the order is delivered.