Shipments and shipping categories
An order will be fulfilled once a shipping method is selected during checkout. In this section, you will learn about how an order will be shipped in one or more shipments using selected shipping method(s).
Shipments
A shipment is the combination of one or more parcels ready to be shipped to a customer's shipping address. Every order is associated with two addresses:
- Origin address (FROM) – this is the location of the stock location or warehouse.
- Shipping address (TO) – this is the customer's location or shipment destination.
The selected inventory strategy will determine if and how an order will be split and how many shipments will be created. To fulfill an order, a customer will have to select a shipping method for each shipment. The shipment(s) will eventually be fulfilled separately. The default strategy is no split, meaning that just a single shipment from a single stock location is always created. If a different strategy is selected the orders fulfillment can be split into more shipments for one of the following reasons:
- The order contains items from more than one stock location.
- The order contains items in more than one shipping category.
If you're happy with the selected inventory strategy, there's no additional action required from your side. All the the necessary resources are automatically generated according to a predefined logic, based on the strategy of your choice. If you need to modify those resources or build custom / more complex inventory strategies, you still have the option to do it. For example, you can create new shipments and update or delete the already generated ones after the order has been approved.
Users can integrate any fulfillment service and provide real-time tracking updates to customers from the associated carrier account.
Stock line items
Stock line items are SKUs in a customers' order split for shipment. If an order is not split, the stock line items are all the SKUs in the order. If the order is split, then the line items will be split into more than one shipment. A single line item can also be split into more than one stock line item.
You can always create new stock items and modify or update existing ones as long as the stock item quantity you choose for the involved product is available in one of the inventory stock locations belonging to the inventory model associated with the related order's market. You're also free to create stock line items associated with a shipment that involves a product that originally wasn't part of the order (e.g. to send an additional product as a free gift, replace an unavailable product with another one, etc.).
Shipping categories
Shipping categories are one of the reasons why an order can be split into multiple shipments. Unless the selected inventory model strategy is the default one, if an order contains line items from two or more shipping categories, the order is split into two or more shipments, one for each shipping category. In case the strategy is no split just a single shipment is always created, no matter if the order contains SKUs associated with different shipping categories.
A shipping category allows users to define specific available shipping methods for the associated SKUs. Available delivery options are displayed to customers before shipment commences. The shipping category and shipping zone an item belongs to can determine the available delivery options.
The association with a shipping category is mandatory for an SKU, except for the case of SKUs marked as do not ship.