Order fulfillment on Shopify or any other e-commerce website refers to the activity of shipping purchased goods to final customers. You can choose to fully automate this procedure or keep it human in this case. You can also decide to manually complete some of the customer’s partial orders.
Even though you would think that Shopify favors automatic order fulfillment, manual order fulfillment has just as many advantages. Many firms must be in charge of the timing of order fulfillment, the management of their inventory, and the calibration of all other operations. This is why there are occasions when manually fulfilling orders makes sense.
We have covered partial, manual, and automated order fulfillment methods in this post. Discover how it functions by reading on.
What Shopify’s Order Fulfillment Is
Let’s look at what order fulfillment on Shopify entails before learning about the manual or automation order fulfillment procedure.
You must accept and ship orders from customers who place product orders on your website or dropshipping business. These products are retrieved from the inventory, packed, and dispatched after being reviewed as part of the order. The order is marked as fulfilled once it has been packed, at which point shipment begins.
We occasionally put orders on hold while fulfilling them for a variety of reasons, including:
- We are upselling and think the buyer might place a larger order.
- The item is not currently in stock but could return in a day or two.
- You create customized orders, so you must get the order ready.
- In the case of Shopify order fulfillment, the aforementioned procedures are followed, but there is also reverse order fulfillment, which takes place when the customer returns the item. In this situation, we must:
- Monitor returns
- Send shipping information
- Restock the supply and give the customer a refund
- How Shopify Orders Are Fulfilled
How precisely do we fulfill orders on our dropshipping or online store? We have outlined the three main procedures for order fulfillment on Shopify in this section. Look at this:
Automatic Order Processing
Automatic order fulfillment, as its name implies, is completely automated; no manual labor is required. An order is immediately moved to the shipping stage after it is received. These scenarios make it possible:
- For the same, you use a third-party service. As a result, they ship and complete the order.
- You don’t need to package your stuff. For instance, let’s say you market goods and services online.
- Because you use a dropshipping business strategy, the order is posted to the marketplace instantly.
Partially filling an order
There may be times when you must only partially complete an order. For instance, you may be waiting for a product that is now out of stock. In this manner, you must send out a portion of an order right now and the remainder later.
Manual Order Processing
- The third item on the list, manual fulfillment on Shopify, is the most crucial. How will you manually complete orders?
- Before we talk about the actual process, here are certain things you should take:
- Open your Shopify account and log in.
- Please go to Settings>Checkout. The choice is located at the bottom right corner.
- Please go to Order Processing.
- You can decide whether you want automated or manual order fulfillment once you get to this page.
- For more information, please refer to the steps above if you select automated fulfillment. Visit the next section if you select Shopify’s manual order fulfillment option.
Encrypt changes.
- The actual process of hand completing orders will now begin.
- Locate and choose the Orders Section.
- You’ll reach the Shopify admin page after clicking this. As soon as a user makes a purchase, your orders will appear here, allowing you to begin fulfilling them.
- Select the order you want to complete from the choices provided.
You must input the tracking number and choose the shipping carrier. Your shipping company might not be included on the list. In this situation, you must choose others and provide a URL for order tracking here.
- To tell your user of the shipment information, click on customer notification.
- After completing the aforementioned steps, select Fulfill Item.
- You can add the URL later if you don’t immediately receive the tracking information. However, you can finish the procedures to let your consumer know that the merchandise has been dispatched.
Printing packing slips is an option found under the More Actions section. Printing slips requires choosing the appropriate option.
Cancellation of Fulfillment
The user has the option to cancel an order while it is being fulfilled. When that occurs, you must to be prepared to easily revoke the order, alter inventory values, and reverse the entire transaction.
On the product order page, click the three dots if you need to cancel the fulfillment. Here, you’ll see a cancellation option for fulfillment.
How Do You Fulfill Orders?
So far, we’ve spoken about how to manually, automatically, and partially fulfill orders on Shopify. However, one of the most important concerns remains unanswered: what is your plan for fulfillment?
You should be aware of the shipping information and your plan by the time you reach the Shopify website where you can verify your orders.
For the same, consider the following:
Ship goods from your home, business, or warehouse. Manual labeling, order packing, and courier partner selection are required. Although it will take time, many small firms start out with this tactic.
As we said previously, either outsource the full fulfillment process or use a third party. Your products will be packaged, kept, and shipped by this third party. Additionally, they might email you URLs or updates on the shipping progress.
Dropship is the last and best choice on the list. You submit an order to the market when a customer places one using your Shopify. The marketplace handles fulfillment and delivers the item to the client. You can utilize a dropshipping service like dropship-empire to fully automate this. By doing this, you may automate the marketplace order placement process and update the tracking IDs on your dashboard.
Your labor is finished once you get orders if you adopt a dropshipping business model or entrust the fulfillment to a third party. Another party completes the remaining portion of the order. The pricing and method of fulfillment are still up to you to choose. For instance, while dropshipping, you can analyze the possibilities on the market and choose the best and fastest option.
During the order fulfillment process, businesses frequently encounter a number of difficulties that have a big influence on their operations and bottom line. Inventory control, order accuracy, shipping and logistics, and client retention are a few prevalent issues.
Businesses can deal with some of these issues by upselling. Businesses can raise the value of each order and enhance revenue by giving clients extra goods or services.
Homepage for Selleasy
An software called Selleasy was created especially for Shopify merchants to assist them increase their Average Order Value (AOV). Store owners may use Selleasy to present high conversion pre- and post-purchase upsell offers that encourage customers to buy companion items.
The product add-ons, cart add-ons, cart page upsell funnel, frequently purchased together bundle, post-purchase upsell, and thank you page add-ons are just a few examples of the many different upsell offers available. To further raise your AOV, you may even display a pop-up for a cart upsell funnel or add-ons based on the products in the cart.
Summary
The steps above describe the procedure for completing orders on Shopify. If your company is like many others, you can use Shopify’s manual order fulfillment procedure. However, adopting a dropshipping platform to fully automate the process is optimal for a dropshipping company. This will save you time and allow you to accurately place orders. In this approach, a lot of manual labor is diminished.
Regardless of the fulfillment method you choose, carefully read over the aforementioned information and consider each option’s specifics for clarification.