Multi Store Location for Inventory - Click and Collect - BEST PRACTICE ADVICE PLEASE

[ECOMHQ]

Hi All,

Looking for some best practice advice, please.

I have a client who has 2 physical stores using Lightspeed as its POS which is integrated with Shopify.

Currently, she has her inventory split between two locations physically and in Shopify (Locations). She has done this as not all stock is in both stores.

BUT - What this is doing when a customer places an order which is located over 2 stores is doubling up the shipping costs. There is no way around this due to the Shopify Multi Origin setup. She does not want to be doing inter branch transfers,

1. What is the best practice to avoid this and make her life easier and reduce costs?
2. Should she still keep two locations on her Lightspeed POS and have all her online inventory in one location in Shopify?
3. If I have 2 Locations in Shopify and 1 Shipping Origin, how will the courier know where to pick the items up from? ( if the order is split over 2 locations )
4. What will happen if a customer orders stock that is located in both stores, should I use StarShipIt or some other courier platform that will pick up from both locations for one order, charging the customer one shipping fee?
5. What happens with Click and Collect, can Shopify split click and collect orders over two stores.
6. Am I completely overthinking this and is there an easier way?

I have inherited this issue and don't want to start messing with things until I get the best practice guidelines.

I hope I am making sense.

Thank you in advance. 

[Liam]

Hi ECOMHQ,

There's a couple ways you could approach this:

Consolidate Inventory in Shopify: One option is to consolidate the inventory into a single location in Shopify. This would mean that all online orders would be fulfilled from a single location, avoiding the issue of doubled shipping costs. However, this could create complications with inventory management, especially if the physical inventory is not actually consolidated in a single location.

Use a Third-Party Shipping App: There are several third-party shipping apps (eg: ShipperHQ, Advanced Shipping Rules, and Bespoke Shipping) that can handle complex shipping scenarios, including multi-origin shipping. These apps can often calculate shipping costs more accurately and flexibly than Shopify's built-in shipping features.  Some of these apps may allow you to set up rules so that if an order is split across multiple locations, the customer is only charged one shipping fee.

Manual Order Adjustment: If the number of orders affected by this issue is relatively small, it might be feasible to manually adjust the shipping costs for these orders. This would involve refunding the extra shipping cost to the customer after the order is placed. This is not an ideal solution, but it could be a temporary workaround while you explore other options.

I'd recommend looking into the above options and seeing which one might work best for your client - best of luck!

[ECOMHQ]

Thank you Liam,

Unfortunatley, all three options are not an option, see below

Consolidate Inventory in Shopify - exactly what you said this would be a nightmare to manage inventory

Manual Order Adjustment - again not feasible, prone to human error

Use a Third-Party Shipping App - I have contacted the apps, and they are frustrated as we are that Shopify has no way to enable and disable this multi origin Shipping option.

From Advanced Shipping Rules - app ( all 3 say the same)

With severe regret, I must inform you that our app cannot overcome this Shopify issue, where Shopify will always add up rates for each fulfillment service/location instead of allowing one rate across the fulfillment services/locations. The very nature of how Shopify has structured its rate requests to our app prevents this.

When there are multiple locations/fulfillment services in an order, Shopify does not send us one single request for rates for that entire order. Instead, they split up the order into each location/fulfillment service, and send us multiple completely separate requests, as if they are separate orders. We return rates for each separate location/fulfillment service, and Shopify's blending logic of adding the rates together is implemented again using those rates we returned and then shows a rate called ‘Shipping’. When the rate name from each location/fulfillment service is the same, that rate name may show instead, but the overall effect remains the same.

There is no way around this with our, or any other app that we’re aware of.

In the scenario of having multiple products from different groups within the app that also belong to different locations, our blended rate logic never gets invoked or applied, because it doesn't see one order with multiple groups, it sees only two completely separate and distinct orders.

We are in communication with Shopify to try to develop a workaround for this and I've added you to the list to be notified when a solution becomes available. 

There must be a way around this, as this is very frustrating, for my clients. We simply want to charge a flat rate shipping no matter of the location of the inventory, 

[muttsonline]

Hey Liam!  I'm looking for the EASIEST way to consolidate inventory from our 8 store locations into our ecomm location.  Is there an app you suggest to use?  running and uploading a csv file every day is not an option.