A fufilment is an action in Shipatron. It allows you to specify triggers and conditions for those triggers, off the back of which an event might take place within Shipatron, or with one of your fulfilment partners. You can use a variety of connection methods to get information to and from your fulfilment partners.
It usually only takes a few moments to setup your fulfilments in Shipatron using a four step workflow. Once the rules are setup, you can then focus on growing your business and making new products, letting Shipatron get your orders where they need to go.
There are three events which can trigger fufilments within Shipatron. These are:
Your fulfilment partners, broadly, are the entities that help you deliver your products to customers. This may be within or outside of your own company, but usually are 3rd party logistics (3PL) providers, warehouses or drop-shippers.
We've created fulfilments to a number of fulfilment partners already. If your fulfilment partner is not listed, you can create your own fulfilment process mapping in a few easy steps.
If you have fulfilment partners who are in different geographies or who handle the shipping of different items, then Shipatron is ideal as you can configure different products to go to different fufilment partners.
The files which describe the order can either be sent by FTP or by email to your fulfilment partner. FTP is typically used where the fufilment provider will be using a dispatch management system to process the order. Email is usually used where a manual process, or a human being, will be managing the dispatch of goods.
Whether using FTP or Email as the transport method, the file itself will be one of the following formats:
When you are emailing an order file to a person or a manual process, CSV is the recommended format as it's widely opened. If you are sending to an automated process, JSON or XML are usually used, but your fulfilment partner should be able to tell you what format to use.
If your fulfilment partner needs a transfer other than FTP or Email, contact our support team when your fulfilment partner has provided you with the details of the transfer requirements.
Filters allow you to only process orders if they meet certain conditions. You can choose all products, products that are tagged in your store with a certain value, or only specific products.
For example, if you wish to select only certain products to be routed to a fulfilment partner, then there are two methods:
You can also choose to have no filter which allows all occurences of that trigger to activate the fulfilment, or you can choose to activate the fulfilment only when products from a certain channel are included in the trigger.
Once you have setup a fulfilment, it's important to run through a test order to make sure everything is working as it should. When you've saved the order and it is running, it will appear with a "Live" icon on the setting page. If for some reason the fufilment is cancelled, it will return to draft mode.