Shipping from Multiple Locations

[rogue]

We are about to switch from OSC to ShopSite and it appears we are going full speed in reverse with shipping options. Here are the problems we are having:

1) The cart only allows for UPS or table rate which means it is not item specific. There is no way to have UPS for one and table rate for another then have them add together

2) There is no way to assign a vendor address to a product

3) All of the threads I have read come to a brick wall and I haven't found an add on module to solve this

4) I am going to have to assign an arbitrary shipping cost to the item that is regardless of zip codes and/or include shipping

5) My competitors have flexibility in their system

Any help would be greatly appreciated but I worry with 10+ vendors with their own shipping locations I may have just made a huge mistake.

Thanks,

Bill

[extragear]

Bill

I posted something the other day that might be similar to what you are talking about.

See, http://support.shopsite.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6002

Many of our products are drop shipable. So it only makes sense to send it from the vendor nearest the customer. (Calculating the shipping then comes into play, times in transit, availability of the item, etc..)

Contact me if we are on the same page and we can parlay. Perhaps development costs for any add on program can be shared in some manner.

Thanks

Tim Sweeney
Belden Motosport
Cycleluggage.com

607-693-1031

[rogue]

Yes and it appears this problem has been posted before. I have an IT guy looking at possibly creating a shipping API since the Pro version allows for this.

I am paving new ground here so I am not sure what to do. I had to assign flat shipping rates to all of my products which is a terrible idea in my opinion. I truly don't understand how OSCommerce can have this function yet shopsite does not.

Most of the stores appear to be businesses that carry all items in their store. This is not the case with us.

Let me know if you come up with something!

Bill

[dortchjm]

I drop ship most of my items from various vendors. Most of my orders are for only one vendor so this is not a big problem yet. Occassionally, I'll get an order of one piece from this vendor and another from a different vendor, which bascially becomes a non-profit sale due to the extra shipping charges. Is there a way to code items by vendor and tack on an extra shipping fee if multiple vendors are selected?

I'm using Pro v10.

Janice

[rogue]

As far as I can tell noone at shopsite cares that we are forced to use either one shipper for all or flat rate shipping.

I have never seen a response from their staff and from what I gather they don't plan to change it.

[extragear]

We too have been working on this.

In our case,

1. We stock most of the best selling items in our warehouse.
2. Dropship from five different suppliers, each having two or more warehouses
3. Offer only one level of shipping, that being standard ground UPS with orders over $100 receiving free shipping
4. We are lacking:

a. Time in transit for our customers
b. More than one shipping option
c. A good way of indicating whether the item is in stock. Yes I know about the inventory tracking feature.


The solution we are coming up with is:


1. Make a master database of available inventory. On a per item/sku basis We will pull the inventory count from our back end management system. This represents our warehouse. Then we will bring in the inventory count on a per warehouse basis from each of our suppliers. Note, most of our suppliers are only able to provide us with files containing their inventory count. These files are updated either per day or hourly.

Take all these sources of inventory and combine them into one master inventory database. You could have the sku, total available count for each sku, units available per suppliers warehouse and the zip code for each warehouse represented in the database.

2. Push this database up to our server. We are hosted by Lexiconn and they provide a free MYSql database. In addition from what I am told you could use a SQLITE database. In any case you now have a database on your server the contains the inventory count on a per warehouse basis with the zip codes associated with each warehouse.

3. Now we would need the following add-ons (call them whatever you want).

A. Inventory add-on. To make sure the item is instock
B. Time in transit add-on so the customer would have an idea as to when they would receive the order
C. More shipping options. For example, if the customer choose standard free ups ground shipping it would ship from our warehouse.
But we could also offer the option of shipping from the nearest suppliers warehouse for a flat fee. So when the customer enters their zipcode and clicks recalculate on the cart they would be presented with:

Free Standard Ground UPS. time in transit 3 to 5 days
$12 if Shipped from suppliers warehouse, time in transit 1 day


4. Other notes.

A. We gave up on offering levels of shipping other than standard ground UPS due to 99% of the customers didnt want to pay the extra cost for higher levels of service. Of course, most of our products would need a box of at least 12" X 13" X 15". If you ship smaller products, the expediated service charges may not be that much.

B. Orders for more than one item could present a problem. As mentioned above, what if the items are in two different warehouses? I would assume it could be coded to take this into account. You could come up with several shipping options with different fees.


C. In some limited experiments we found that customers didnt mind paying the extra fee to receive the item sooner.

D. The master database would only be as up to date as the last time the data was refreshed in it. I have heard of more complex ecommerce systems using EDI850? in which the suppliers inventory and warehouses are tied in directly with the resellers management system and website. So stock availability is pretty much real time. Once a order comes in, the card is approved and the order is sent to the supplier electronically. I was told to look for at $100k in the development of such a system. And this assumes your suppliers are willing to give you real time access.

E. I realize that Shopsite has features or there are add-ons that address some of these issues.


I would very much like any feedback anyone would be willing to share on this. At this point, we have been parlaying with a few developers and it all seems doable.

Tim Sweeney
Belden Motosport
607-693-1031

[88man1]

It would be great if we could enter the "ship from" zip code in shopsite backend for each product and then have the UPS rates calculated based off that. I have items dropshipped from at least 7 different states. Right now I can add handling charges and get it "close" most of the time.

With dropshipping becoming more popular, this would be a great addition to shopsite and would make my shipping calculations much easier and more accurate for me and my customers.