We placed a test order on our live site on March 25. The normal shipping processing time for this order is 1-2 business days and should ship within 4-7 business days within the United States
However, the order status is still showing “In Progress” on the orders page, and it’s not clear whether the dropshipping supplier (Spocket) is trying to fulfill the order!
Is there anything we are missing? Like a missing setup that must be causing this delay?
From what you described, it seems that the suppliers turnaround time for processing and shipping the item out the door is up to 9 or 10 business days (give or take). In theory, you should have received an update regarding this earlier this week. Since we are not too far off from the turnaround time set by the supplier, I would recommend reaching out to them directly through Spocket to see if they can provide more insight. From our end, we cannot determine what might be delaying a suppliers shipment.
With that being said, it would be worthwhile going over your settings to ensure everything is properly set up on your end. It sounds as though the settings are set up quite well if you are able to track the status of the order itself. Can you walk me through your ordering process?
Testing out the order process for your dropshipping store gives you great insight on the turnaround. I typically would recommend setting a higher turnaround time for your customers simply because you cannot control the workflow of the supplier. Sometimes poor turnaround will force merchants to stop working with a certain supplier - all part of the ebbs and flows of dropshipping. However, the best route to take at this point would be to reach out to the supplier for more context and verify that everything is set up properly.
Please let me know how you get on and I’ll be happy to confirm that your process is properly set up.
Upon further investigation, we realized that it’s also required to log into the supplier’s website and manually place the order!
Until now, we were under the impression that the entire order processing is automated and the fulfillment starts when an order is placed through the website. So in our case, we logged into Spocket and manually set the order, which now kickstarted the fulfillment process.
Is there a way to automate this process with no manual intervention? or is this a required intermittent step?
Thanks again for your help and support!
Ayurblooms
Placing the order manually for the product is a crucial step in the dropshipping business plan. While some processes are automated, this one is required to be completed manually as it typically requires the merchant themselves to pay for the product with the supplier. Our system will connect with the application to sync product information, orders for products from Shopify and other important information but the act of initiating the product being shipped requires a manual action of purchasing it with the supplier directly.
With that being said, it will be worthwhile keeping an eye on the status of the order to see if Spocket will automatically change the status when the item is shipped. Some applications require you to input the shipping information received from the supplier to mark the order as shipped and therefore notify your customer. I would suggest getting in touch with Spocket support to clarify this crucial transition process and what is required of you, the merchant.