Dropshipping overview

Dropshipping is used when a supplier ships items directly to your customer instead of sending the stock to your warehouse first. In Qoblex, dropshipping always starts from an existing sale order: you pick the items the supplier should ship, and Qoblex raises the supplier purchase orders for you.

Qoblex creates one or more dropship purchase orders for the supplier, links them back to the sale order, and lets you record the fulfilment against the sale order once the supplier has shipped the goods. This keeps the customer order and the supplier order tied together, so the sale order is only marked shipped when the supplier actually ships.

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The end-to-end flow

Dropshipping in Qoblex follows one path from sale order to fulfilment:

1. Start from a sale order that contains dropshippable items.
2. Use the Drop Ship action on the sales list and select the items the supplier should ship.
3. Qoblex creates one or more dropship purchase orders, grouped by supplier and linked back to the sale order.
4. You send each purchase order to the supplier, and the supplier ships directly to the customer.
5. When the supplier confirms shipment, you receive the dropship purchase order. Qoblex records the fulfilment against the sale order in one step.

The dropship purchase order is an ordinary purchase order with the Drop Ship PO subtype. Managing it (statuses, receiving, editing) is covered in the Purchasing section; this overview focuses on the sales side of the flow.

Where dropshipping starts

Dropshipping starts from the sales list, not from inside a single sale order.

1. Go to Sales.
2. Select the one sale order you want to dropship.
3. Open Bulk Actions and choose Drop Ship.

This opens the Drop Ship dialog, which lists the dropshippable items on the order so you can choose which ones to send to the supplier.

The Drop Ship action handles one sale order at a time. If no order is selected, Qoblex shows Select a sale order to drop ship. If more than one order is selected, it shows You can drop ship one sale order at a time.

Only items whose variant is marked as dropshippable appear in the dialog. If the order has no dropshippable items, the dialog shows No dropshippable items in this order. with a note to mark variants as dropship on the product page.

What Qoblex creates

When you confirm the Drop Ship dialog, Qoblex creates dropship purchase orders with the Drop Ship PO subtype. If the selected items come from more than one supplier, Qoblex creates a separate purchase order for each supplier.

Each dropship purchase order:

• is linked back to the original sale order
• is grouped by supplier
• uses the drop ship location as its receiving location
• uses each variant’s purchase price
• is created in Approved status

Use the generated purchase order as the document you send to the supplier. The supplier should ship the goods directly to the customer’s delivery address on the linked sale order.

What happens when the order is received

When the supplier confirms shipment and you receive the dropship purchase order, Qoblex completes the dropshipment against the linked sale order in a single step. It:

• creates and authorizes the goods receipt at the drop ship location
• allocates the received quantity to the linked sale order
• creates a shipment on the sale order
• dispatches that shipment

Because receiving a dropship purchase order allocates, ships, and dispatches the sale order together, confirm the supplier has shipped the full quantity before you receive it. A dropship purchase order that has already been received cannot be received again.

The step-by-step receiving instructions live in Fulfil a dropshipped order.

Before you start

Dropshipping only works once the supporting setup is in place. Before your first dropship order, confirm:

• a drop ship location exists in your account
• the products you want to dropship have their variants marked as dropshippable
• each dropshippable variant has a supplier

If any of these are missing, the Drop Ship action will show nothing to select or return an error. See Before you use dropshipping for the full setup checklist, and Dropshipping troubleshooting for the exact messages and their fixes.

Related articles

• Before you use dropshipping covers the drop ship location, dropship variant settings, and suppliers you need first.
• Create dropship purchase orders walks through the Drop Ship dialog step by step.
• Fulfil a dropshipped order covers receiving the dropship purchase order and recording fulfilment on the sale order.
• Update supplier dropship inventory explains keeping supplier stock levels current.
• For the created purchase order itself, see the Purchasing section on purchase order statuses and actions and receiving goods.