Problem with Drop Ship Status
Printed From: ProductCart E-Commerce Solutions
Category: ProductCart
Forum Name: Using ProductCart
Forum Description: Running your store with ProductCart
URL: https://forum.productcart.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=3598
Printed Date: 07-May-2024 at 9:29am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Problem with Drop Ship Status
Posted By: mattprice
Subject: Problem with Drop Ship Status
Date Posted: 06-April-2010 at 10:12am
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I have a problem with the previous order screen that drop shippers see.
Most of our orders have multiple products coming from differerent drop shippers. This works fine in that the individual drop shippers are individually notified to ship their respective products.
The problem occurs with the order status that each individual drop shipper sees after shipping their product. If drop shipper A ships all their products on an order then the status they see in sdsViewPast.asp will still say "partially shipped" all the time that drop shipper B or C etc has not shipped their products on the same order.
It is of no concern to drop shipper A as to whether the drop shipper B or C has shipped their share of the order and this mean that he cannot keep a tidy record on which of his orders HE has only partially shipped. Is their any way that this status of "partially shipped" and "shipped" can be filtered to the individual drop shippers view. Our store has only been live for less than a week but this is already causing confusion among our drop shippers.
Thanks
Matt
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Replies:
Posted By: mattprice
Date Posted: 07-April-2010 at 11:00am
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I have just had another drop shipper phone me up to ask why their order is still saying part shipped when they have shipped their product so I tried to look at the code behind sdsViewPast.asp order status myself.
 I could only deduce that this it not going to be easy because the only database field for a status of an order is for the order as a whole and not from the perspective of an individual drop shipper.
I do think the drop shippers past orders screen (sdsViewPast.asp) view as it stands is in error because I believe it should give the status from a drop shippers perpective. I would be grateful if EI could look at this with a view to a possible update in a future revision.
Its beyond my technical ability I am afraid but I am guessing the logic is already somewhere there because during the drop shippers shipping process the "process shipment" button is removed if the drop shipper has shipped all their products. This same logic would determine whether the status of the order should have a status of pending or shipped in the sdsViewPast.asp. I am not sure how the pending shipment status could be obtained (i.e when a drop shipper has only part shipped their own products regardless of whether there are other products on the order) but at the very least I think a drop shippers status telling them whether their order is still pending or shipped is better than the current information. I.e a shipped or not shipped status for each drop shipper is better than a confusing status that tells them whether the overall order is shipped, not shipped or pending.
Sorry if I have'nt made myself understood.
Regards
Matt
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Posted By: Hamish
Date Posted: 07-April-2010 at 11:11am
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Hi Matt, The order has just one shipping status, but I think your point is valid - It's strange it hasn't come up before, but I'm guessing most drop shippers rely on their own systems to track the staus of the orders they have received. I'll take a look and most likely get it added to the features wish list. ------------- Editing ProductCart Code? See http://wiki.earlyimpact.com/developers/editcode" rel="nofollow - WIKI Guidelines for Editing ProductCart's ASP Source Code |
Posted By: Hamish
Date Posted: 07-April-2010 at 12:41pm
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Hi, Please raise a support ticket as we believe we can create a fix for this easily. Please include FTP details in the ticket as we will need them. ------------- Editing ProductCart Code? See http://wiki.earlyimpact.com/developers/editcode" rel="nofollow - WIKI Guidelines for Editing ProductCart's ASP Source Code |
Posted By: mattprice
Date Posted: 07-April-2010 at 1:22pm
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Hi Hamish,
Support issue raised. Many thanks, I really appreciate this.
Matt
http://www.earlyimpact.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3579 -
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Posted By: DebbieID
Date Posted: 11-April-2010 at 2:17pm
| I also have received complaints from confused dropshippers about this issue. Can the fix be posted? I'd like to implement it also. |
Posted By: ProductCart
Date Posted: 11-April-2010 at 8:01pm
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Debbie,
if the objective is simply to show "Shipped" instead of "Partially Shipped" on the orders summary page shown to the drop-shipper, then open the file pc/sds_viewPast.asp and locate the line:
Replace it with...
------------- The ProductCart Team Home of ProductCart http://www.productcart.com" rel="nofollow - shopping cart software |
Posted By: mattprice
Date Posted: 13-April-2010 at 4:19am
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The above solution only works when the customer's order contains just products for one drop shipper. If the customer has ordered products from multiple drop shippers or the order contains a mixture of dropship products and non-dropship products then the above fix can cause more confusion. This is because the status of an order is seen from the overall order status and not from the filtered perspective of the individual drop shipper.
If, as exampled above, a customer orders one drop ship item and one non drop ship item and the store owner ships his non drop ship item nice and quickly then the dropshipper will see a status of his (as yet not shipped) product as either :-
a) Partially Shipped (before the Early Impact code change above)
or
b) Shipped (after the Early Impact code change above)
Both statuses are incorrect but I think the first (with the original sds_viewPast.asp code) is less damaging. This is because it still assumes that an action needs to be perfomed by the drop shipper.
As part of a fix I do not think it is necessarily important to show whether a drop shipper himself has partially shipped products (because any shipped products on an order are correctly disabled when the drop shipper click on the shipping wizard) but for me it is important for a each drop shipper to see at a glance whether he has any outstanding orders for his own products. I.e a status of either 'pending' or 'shipped' against each order would suffice.
Thanks
Matt
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Posted By: DebbieID
Date Posted: 13-April-2010 at 8:33am
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I would agree with you, Matt. It will cause more confusion for the dropshipper to see a status of shipped on an order that he still needs to fill because another dropshipper has already filled their portion of the order.
Assuming an order has products from two dropshippers, it would be ideal if the dropshipper's status changed to shipped for each dropshipper when they shipped their portion of the order, but remained as processed for the other dropshippers until they also shipped their portion. The overall status of the order in the control panel should continue to work the way it does now.
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Posted By: mattprice
Date Posted: 13-April-2010 at 8:44am
Debbie, you described the problem in your last post more clearly than I have achieved in a whole thread. I have a tendancy to ramble. 
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Posted By: mattprice
Date Posted: 15-April-2010 at 9:59am
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For anyone following this post...
There wasn't such a quick fix. Good news is that EI have pegged this for an upcoming release so I will await in anticipation.
Mat
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Posted By: mattprice
Date Posted: 23-April-2010 at 7:42am
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Just to add.... when sds_viewPast.asp is revisited on a future release it might be an idea to have pagination for when a drop shipper has a lot of orders. We have drop shippers with a growing list of orders and I imagine they will get hit with page load issues within a few months. Another option may be to make the the archived order exclusion as mentioned in http://www.earlyimpact.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3579 - previous post a standard update. Thanks
Matt
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Posted By: DebbieID
Date Posted: 23-April-2010 at 9:25am
| Again, I would agree. We do have many dropshippers that have a page of orders a mile long. The idea to move them to an "archived" location in the dropshipper screen is a great idea; then the dropshippers only see recent, current or outstanding orders. And once the store administrator has archived them, they should not need to be accessed again, although a link to that dropshippers archived orders would be helpful, especially in situations where a customer needs an order reshipped due to a problem and the dropshipper needs to look up the order. |
Posted By: ProductCart
Date Posted: 24-April-2010 at 6:45pm
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Drop-shipping support in ProductCart is a pretty cool feature set, so we are happy to improve things where we can.
To sum up recommendations for ProductCart v4.1: (1) Handle status separately at the drop-shipper level We should save Order ID, Drop Shipper ID, and Order Status in a separate table so that it can be tracked and displayed separately. This is really just a display issue for the drop-shipper. It does not matter to the store manager. (2) Add pagination This refers to the same page (the page where drop-shippers see a list of orders that pertain to them). Definitely makes sense. (3) Order archiving Ability for drop-shippers to hide orders that they are "done" with. Correct? Not sure that we'll be able to add everything for v4.1, but we'll do our best. The first 2 should be there for sure. By the way: we just received a message from a Certified ProductCart Developer that is testing a new "Multiple Ship-From Locations Shipping Calculator" (not the official name, just a name we made up), which will dynamically calculate shipping charges based on each drop-shipper location and the products in the shopping cart that pertain to it, and then discount the total shown to the customer based on a few variables (so the customer does not pay for the sum of all shipments, if you don't want them to). More to come... ------------- The ProductCart Team Home of ProductCart http://www.productcart.com" rel="nofollow - shopping cart software |
Posted By: benpate
Date Posted: 24-April-2010 at 10:28pm
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Nice! ------------- http://www.web1seo.com - ProductCart SEO - Resellers and Affiliates welcome |
Posted By: mattprice
Date Posted: 25-April-2010 at 2:04am
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The drop shippers toolset is indeed one of the coolest features in PC and your 3 point summary nails the only obvious improvements from our pespective.
The first 2 in the list are the most critical for us and I will be over the moon if these make V4.1
With regards the third point. I wonder whether it would be possible to have the order hide automatically by default when a drop shipper has shipped all his / her items on that order. This may only be a personal preference so dont worry if not. If you introduce Order ID, Drop Shipper ID, and Order Status into the DB table then this would open up opportunities for store owners to tweak the Drop Shippers display to their own business preferences.
Great news,
Thanks
Matt
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Posted By: DebbieID
Date Posted: 25-April-2010 at 10:04am
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I, too, am enthusiastic about the proposed dropshipper updates. I would agree that the third item (archiving) is the lower priority of these three. However, my original thought on this was that when the store administrator archived the order, it would be archived for the dropshipper, with a link to view archived orders on the dropshipper screen. I don't know if this makes the programming any easier . . .
I'm also excited to hear about the potential new shipping calculator that may be potentially available. This is an area we have struggled with, as it's difficult to calculate fair rates across the board for customers when you have multiple dropshippers involved in an order.
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Posted By: RedLeafDev
Date Posted: 29-April-2010 at 2:41pm
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Thank you EI for the nice "teaser" - we have just released an Add-on which allows you to calculate shipping from the drop shipper's location.
You can find it by going to this page: http://wiki.earlyimpact.com/widgets/thirdparty/calculate_shipping_from_drop_shipper - http://wiki.earlyimpact.com/widgets/thirdparty/calculate_shipping_from_drop_shipper . There is an example here and quite a bit of information. It is available for all builds, version 3.51 and above.
See EI's blog piece about it here: http://blog.earlyimpact.com/2010/04/calculating-shipping-charges-when.html - http://blog.earlyimpact.com/2010/04/calculating-shipping-charges-when.html .
Amy ------------- http://www.redleafdevelopment.com" rel="nofollow - Red Leaf Development Certified ProductCart Developers www.redleafdevelopment.com |
Posted By: mattprice
Date Posted: 13-February-2011 at 3:59am
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I have only just upgraded to V4.1 but would just like to pass my thanks on to EI for the enhancements to what was already an excellent drop shipping facility in Productcart. The more accurate drop shipper order status and orde history pagination address the concerns I raised at the start of this thread perfectly.
Many Thanks
Matt
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Posted By: DebbieID
Date Posted: 13-February-2011 at 7:43am
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I, too, am enjoying the new dropshipper upgrades. I do have a question/suggestion, though. A fairly recent upgrade to the control panel was the ability to split apart the quantity of an item being shipped if it was shipping in two packages for some reason (i.e., the customer ordered 2, one is in stock so it is shipped, the second is shipped at a later time). I had assumed that the dropshippers had this feature as well, but recently when I logged into a dropshipper account, that did not seem to be the case. Should that functionality be added as well? The dropshipper ends up either having to mark neither one as shipped, or marking them both as shipped, which removes the order from the outstanding list.
Does anyone have any insight on this?
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