fulfillment based on country using locations

[fschaal]

Hi,

I'm trying to set up the following scenario but can't figure out what would be the best approach to set this up in Shopify.

• There is currently one online shop for US and EU.
• The US warehouse and the EU warehouse both have their own stock.
• The US warehouse only fulfills orders that are for the US and Canada but the EU warehouse fulfills all EU orders. 

I've been reading through the documentation regarding Shopify locations and that seems to be almost perfect. The only thing that seems to be missing is that you can not assign orders based on country to a specific location. As far as I can see this is only priority based. Working without location-based stock would mean that we have global stock and cannot show accurate if a product is available in the EU for example.

The quick-fix seems to be to create a US store and an EU store but I was wondering if there is anything possible to achieve this in one store?

Thanks!

[cescapesca86]

Hello GhostApps,

this app seems to be very interesting for what we need to do. Currently we have a warehouse in the US, and want to open a second one in Europe. In case the order needs to go to a some countries (US and others) shipping address it should come from the US warehouse, otherwise for other countries from the EU warehouse.

My questions are:

1) What does a customer see when he is on the website? Example, a customer from Germany: does he see all products in stock anywhere, or only ones in stock in the EU warehouse? Does the currency change according to the location of the customer?

2) Assuming he can see all products, even the ones only in the US warehouse, what happens when he chooses a product that is not available in the EU warehouse? Can he still buy it (paying more for shipping)?

3) What about if he chooses Product A (in US warehouse) and Product B (in EU warehouse)? Does the order get split so each warehouse should send out a package, with the shipping cost for each item from each warehouse?

Sorry for the many questions! The app sounds quite interesting so I am trying to understand if it meets our needs or not, I could not find this information on the page https://apps.shopify.com/location-based-fulfillment.  Thanks in advance!

[padwanshoopyfy]

One thing you might forget here. 
I 100% agree with what you are doing and I need to do the same, but actually we all need an IP-based detection from the beginning. 
Because it might be that the inventory is at 0 for US clients and you won't fulfil the order from Canada to US. 

So in my opinion we all need IP-based detection form the beginning to show the correct inventory to the customer and in the second step the location inventory should be selected on the final country address of the order from the customer.

Do you already have any solution on this?

[padwanshoopyfy]

You can offer prices based on IP address. 
There is an app out there. 
I will test it the next days.

[padwanshoopyfy]

Hey there, 

I would need the same you proposed. 
I think the App is super nice to keep the inventory straight, but still it would be good if the customer can see the inventory from the beginning (e.g. when IP address US and the product inventory in US is 0 and in Europe it is 20, the customer from the US will see that the product is sold out -> sign up for message when back in stock; while the Europe customer can normally purchase the product

[padwanshoopyfy]

Hey there, 

I would be open for a chat about what you proposed. 
If you manage to program the IP-based inventory showing to the customer and then adding the functionality of this app https://apps.shopify.com/location-based-fulfillment

Which in my understanding is lowering the inventory in the correct location based on the order country (shipping country); I would be open for a discussion ;-). 

All the best, 
Hannes
hannes@stoyo.io

[cescapesca86]

Hi @padwanshoopyfy,

thanks for your message. We did not find a solution yet, but I am sure we are not the only company with this need, there should be an app!

Ideally for us would be: show inventory for all warehouses, and at the moment of checkout choose the best warehouse for each item in the cart and calculate shipping costs accordingly.

Example: Product A is available in both warehouses, product B only in warehouse in US.  Customer is buying from Germany --> product A will ship from EU warehouse, product B from US warehouse (customer will receive 2 separate packages). Result: customer can get all products he wants, at the cheapest shipping cost possible.

As for the prices, for us at least, two options are fine:

1) have a single price for all warehouses (ex. in USD), which should get converted to the local currency according to IP when the customer is shopping (ideal) OR

2) set the prices for each warehouse in shopify (more annoying but possible) --> still when paying the total amount must be in one currency, preferably the customer's

Please share if anyone knows an app(s) that can help us!

[fr3eze]

While the app Location Based Fulfillment by ghostapps is useful for fulfillment from multiple countries. It does not solve the actual problem which every one needed to solve here, the independant stock availability handling.

For our case, we are selling one product covering 2 countries and hold inventory in each location. When the warehouse in country A runs out of stock:

• Customer in the location should see the product as out of stock.
• It can be either implemented via ip-detection or during checkout (detect shipping address country)
• Country B should never responsible to fulfill the order from Country A.

While Shopify allows merchant to set fulfillment priority and and which location able to fulfill online order. I really think it should be easy to develop such solution on the current framework.

On the other hand, it is unbelievable to learn that none of the existing apps solve this problem while obviously there is big demand. The closest I could find is Product Inventory Informationby. It can only show the stock level for each location on product page, yet it wont be able to stop customer from placing order if the location is out of stock.

[Xperteria]

We recently developed a solution which resolves this issue.

So you can:

• Allocate your inventory for each location
• Allow customers to purchase from their nearest warehouse only (can be changed from admin).
• Set different stock levels for each location.
• Auto detect customer location or manually allow customers to pick a location.

For example - you have two warehouses:

1. USA - for customers from USA and Canada
2. UK - for customers from UK only.

So customers from UK, will be able to purchase stock available in UK warehouse only.

This way you can avoid overselling, and manage stock from one place.

Please feel free to get in touch for more details: info@xperteria.com

Cheers,

Ham

[thirdday]

hi
thanks for the update

can the app change the location_id field?

thanks

[Elizabeth_Perki]

Hello Ham,

thanks for your message. I've sent you an email to get in touch.

Regards,

Francesca