Custom Fulfilment & Manual Supplier Settling

[Burnleys_Store]

Hello Shopify Community! 

I am in the process of setting up a store that will essentially act as a retailer for small businesses. All of the orders purchased through my store will be fulfilled by the small businesses (my suppliers). So far from my research, it seems that creating a 'Custom Fulfilment Service' for each of these suppliers is the best approach for my fulfilment process. 

Q. 1) Can anyone confirm that this is the best approach or are there any alternatives?

Another question I haven't been able to answer around this is how I can settle the cost of the purchase with my supplier. I have read that this may need to be done manually on an order-by-order or month-end basis, however, I am not sure how this would work through Shopify. 

Q. 2) Are there any workarounds on Shopify where I can settle costs with my suppliers on an order-by-order basis, or a month-end basis through this custom fulfilment approach? 

Any other resources / best practice you can share would be greatly appreciated. 

Thanks in advance! 

Burnley  

[JoesIdeas · Accepted solution]

If you don't want to build a custom fulfillment service, you could use Order Automator app to do this:

1) Create a tag rule that sends a notification to the supplier, an email with all the products assigned to that vendor (supplier).

2) There is an option to include a remote tracking url. Check that, and the supplier will see in the email a link they can go to, to add tracking after they ship it

3) When they add the tracking remotely, it will update in your Shopify store, then trigger the shipment email to your customer.

For settling payments with your supplier, it's between you and your supplier how you want to arrange this. I've owned a couple stores and worked with different suppliers with these arrangements:

- Submit our bank information into their billing system, they automatically deduct payments once a week and send the invoice. I don't remember what software it was, I think it was QuickBooks

- Another supplier sent an invoice once a month, and we paid manually via check or bank transfer (PayPal could be an option too)

- Another supplier we pay on every order before they ship (this was a pain)

I think the best way is that first one. We had a trusting relationship, so they shipped out our products as they came in, and then the weekly invoice our team could confirm to ensure it was correct (it always was).

[Burnleys_Store]

Thanks very much, @JoesIdeas!