Drop-Shipping multiple items from multiple warehouses to 1 customer on the same order

[modmike]

Hey everyone, thanks for looking. I have a question about shipping calculations in MivaMerchant for my business model.

Here are the facts:
- we do not stock any inventory
- we drop-ship items from 42 different warehouse suppliers currently, and the number is constantly growing as we expand our business. In three years I anticipate we will have over 300 warehouse suppliers.
- our warehouse suppliers are located all over the USA, and a couple are international
- our warehouse suppliers all use different shipping methods including Fedex, UPS, DHL, USPS, Bax Global, and other freight companies
- our products vary greatly in size, weight, and dimensions. One item can be 20x20x10 with a weight of 25 lbs, the next 74x20x5 with a weight of 6 lbs, another 10x5x1 with a weight of 2 lbs. All shapes, all sizes, all weights.

The Problem:
The customer goes to our website, he wants to buy many different items. He adds 5 different items to his shopping cart. All 5 of these items are shipping from different warehouse suppliers in our system. 5 packages need to be sent. Our website software assumes all packages are coming from one location, in one box. Shipping is grossly underestimated, since it should be calculated as 5 locations, 5 boxes.

The Solution I am Searching For:
A module that plugs into the mivamerchant software that links each product to a specific warehouse. The warehouse information in our system includes the address of the location it is shipping from. The product information includes the weight and dimensions. When an order comes into the system for multiple items from multiple warehouses, the module identifies these and shows the customer during checkout "you will be receiving 5 boxes, shipping for each box/item is itemized below". The customer easily understands that the products are shipped separately in separate boxes, with separate shipping costs. All of this is calculated on live rates from Fedex/UPS/DHL/USPS - whatever the warehouse uses as the primary courier.


Does anything like this exist? Can anybody develop it for me? I am sure this would be immensely beneficial to many companies besides my own.

[d_host]

Re: Drop-Shipping multiple items from multiple warehouses to 1 customer on the same o

Viking Coders have two modules that can do most of what you describe: UPS Online Advanced and FedEx Advanced. These will, of course, work for UPS and FedEx shipments. You can specify on a per-product basis the originating ZIP code where products are shipped from (ie: which warehouse), how many items can fit in a box, etc. You can even do dimensional weight for oversized packages, which is how both UPS and FedEx handle these weird size boxes like you mentioned (74" long, but only 5" tall).

With these modules you could let clients buy 5 products and have them shipped from 5 different suppliers in 5 separate boxes - no problem. I'm just not sure if there's enough logic in there to figure out if someone bought 5 products where let's say 3 are available from the same warehouse, and how you'd need to configure it so that all 3 can be fit in one box (if they can fit in a single box). That may be something you may need to contact Viking Coders for to see if they can add some custom code to these modules, or create a custom add-on for your particular needs.

[modmike]

Re: Drop-Shipping multiple items from multiple warehouses to 1 customer on the same o

Thanks for the reply! What about if our supplier ships with DHL, USPS, Bax Global, or anything other than UPS or Fedex?

[Kent Multer]

Re: Drop-Shipping multiple items from multiple warehouses to 1 customer on the same o

I wrote a custom shipping module a few years ago that's very similar to what you're describing. If you can't find an off-the-shelf solution, you can contact me by email to discuss it further.