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How to Create Drop Ship Items

Updated

Drop shipping allows you to fulfill orders directly from your vendor to your customer without holding inventory in your warehouse. When you receive an order, Pulse Commerce automatically creates a purchase order and sends it to your vendor, who ships directly to your customer.

Important: Drop ship SKUs must be configured with vendor information before they can be used for order fulfillment.
🔍 Understanding Drop Ship SKUs - How They Work

Drop ship SKUs work alongside your inventory SKUs to provide fulfillment flexibility. Here's what makes them unique:

Key Differences from Inventory SKUs:

  • No warehouse location assigned - Items ship directly from vendor to customer
  • Automatic purchase order creation - System generates PO when order contains drop ship items
  • Vendor assignment required - Each drop ship SKU must be linked to a specific vendor
  • Same pricing structure - Drop ship SKUs share pricing with their inventory counterparts

Naming Convention: Drop ship SKUs typically use a "DS" suffix to distinguish them from inventory SKUs (e.g., if your inventory SKU is "Tshirt-001", the drop ship version would be "Tshirt-001-DS").

Important: Drop ship SKUs do not have an inventory tab since they are fulfilled directly by vendors.
📦 Creating and Configuring Drop Ship SKUs

Set up drop ship SKUs to enable vendor fulfillment for your products.

1Navigate to Products > Product Catalog Manager.

2Click Add New Product and fill in the required product information.

3For Product Type, select Drop Ship Item.

4Complete the product setup. Note that the inventory tab will not appear for drop ship items.

5Go to the Vendors tab and select your vendor/supplier from the dropdown.

6Save the product configuration.

Best Practice: If you have products that can be fulfilled either from inventory or via drop ship, create both an inventory SKU and a corresponding drop ship SKU with the "DS" suffix.
🚚 Processing Drop Ship Orders - From Order to Fulfillment

When a customer orders a drop ship item, Pulse Commerce automatically creates a purchase order and manages the fulfillment workflow. Learn more on How to Place a Drop Ship Order for a Customer. 

Automatic Purchase Order Creation

When an order contains drop ship SKUs, the system automatically:

  • Creates a purchase order assigned to the configured vendor
  • Sets the ship-to address as the customer's delivery address
  • Links the PO to the sales order for tracking

Fulfillment Steps

1Navigate to Vendors > Search Purchase Orders > View Purchase Orders (Drop Ship).

2Locate the relevant purchase order. Verify the ship-to address shows your customer's information.

3Click Approve PO to confirm the order with your vendor.

4Under the CRM tab, email the PO details to your vendor.

Email Configuration Required: Ensure your email server is properly configured to relay emails from your domain through Pulse Commerce.

5Once your vendor confirms shipment, click Mark As Shipped and enter the tracking information provided by your vendor.

6The system automatically updates the connected sales order line item status to Shipped. If all items on the order are shipped, the entire order status becomes Shipped.

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