Create dropship purchase orders

When a sales order contains items your supplier ships directly to the customer, you create dropship purchase orders for those items instead of picking and packing them from your own stock. Qoblex reads the eligible items from the sales order, groups them by supplier, and creates one or more purchase orders that already point back at the customer’s order.

You start this from the Sales list by selecting a single order and choosing Drop Ship. Only product variants that are set up for dropshipping appear in the dialog, and you choose which of them to include before Qoblex creates the purchase orders.

Before you start

Dropshipping relies on a few pieces of setup being in place. If any are missing, the dialog either shows no items or returns a validation message when you try to create the purchase orders.

• The sales order must be past Quote status. Quote orders cannot be dropshipped.
• Each product variant you want to dropship must be marked for dropshipping. On the product page, set the variant’s Dropship field to Always Dropship or Optional Dropship (anything other than Do Not Dropship).
• Each of those variants must have a supplier assigned.
• Your company must have a drop ship location configured, and a non-inventory location that Qoblex can use as the billing location.

To mark a variant for dropshipping, open Inventory > Products, open the variant, and set its Dropship field. See Before you use dropshipping for the full setup checklist.

Create the dropship purchase orders

1. Go to Sales.
2. Select a single sales order in the list.
3. Open Bulk Actions and choose Drop Ship.
4. In the Drop Ship dialog, review the items listed under Select the items you want to drop ship.
5. Leave the checkbox selected for each item the supplier should ship, and clear the checkbox for any item you want to exclude from this run.
6. Select Drop Ship.

Qoblex creates the purchase orders and shows Drop ship Purchase Order(s) [numbers] created. The dialog closes and the sales list refreshes.

You can drop ship one sales order at a time from the list. If you select no order, Qoblex shows Select a sale order to drop ship. If you select more than one, it shows You can drop ship one sale order at a time.

What the dialog lists

The dialog lists each eligible item from the sales order in a table with these columns:

• Product
• SKU (shows — if the variant has no SKU)
• Quantity

Only variants that are enabled for dropshipping appear here. Every listed item starts selected. The Drop Ship button stays disabled while no items are selected, so you cannot start a run with an empty selection.

If the order has no eligible items, the dialog shows No dropshippable items in this order. with the hint Mark variants as “Dropship” in the product page to enable this. If Qoblex cannot load the items, it shows Failed to load dropshippable items.

What Qoblex creates

Qoblex creates one or more purchase orders in Approved status. Items are grouped by supplier, so a sales order whose items come from two suppliers produces two purchase orders. Each purchase order is a dropship purchase order: it is linked back to the original sales order and uses your drop ship location as its shipping location.

For each selected sales order line, Qoblex carries the product variant, quantity, unit of measure, and purchase price into the purchase order line, along with the supplier’s currency and purchase tax class. If a supplier has no purchase tax class, Qoblex applies your company’s default purchase-order tax class.

A dropship purchase order is created directly in Approved status. Review each generated purchase order before you send it to a supplier.

Manage the purchase orders

The dropship purchase orders are ordinary purchase orders and are managed in the Purchasing section. Open each one there to review the supplier, quantities, purchase costs, and delivery details before sending it, and to record receipt when the supplier ships. See Create a purchase order and Purchase order statuses and actions for how purchase orders behave, and Fulfill a dropshipped order for how the shipment records back against the sales order.