If your shipments are not only being processed at your own warehouse, but are also shipped from a third-party facility, pixi* has various methods and options on offer. Examples for external storage are your supplier's or manufacturer's warehouse. This is usually called "fulfillment" or "dropshipping": goods are sold through your online shop, but sent from external storage directly to the end customer. This can be used, for example, for products which are rarely being sold or which are sold in very large quantities and whose storage does in economical terms not make sense to you. In the same way, third-party deliveries are also used with particularly large, heavy or unwieldy products, whose storage and shipment would work out as far too intricate.

pixi* offers a variety of options for the handling of these third-party deliveries. A simplified way which requires some manual effort is described to you in more detail in a subsequent article. But first, you'll find an overview of your options to manage these using pixi:

Third-Party Deliveries using the pixi* Direct Fulfillment interface

Using this feature, individual order lines can be assigned a fulfillment identifier. This means that these orders are available to the manufacturer / supplier via API (application programming interface): The manufacturer can therefore pull order data such as order lines and delivery address via pixi* API, ship the goods with their own warehouse management system independently and report the successful shipment and tracking number to pixi* via same API. Consequently mixed orders are also possible; orders can include items that you process for shipment yourself at your in-house storage and items which the manufacturer ships directly to the end customer. The fulfillment identifier prevents drop shipment items from appearing on your in-house picklist. In the same way, it is possible to assign different items stemming from the same customer order to different manufacturers and / or suppliers via the API. The use of the fulfillment features requires your suppliers to use the pixi* API or for pixi* to provide you with a custom interface, which imports the orders into the ERP of your suppliers and retrieves the shipping status reporting it then to pixi*. In the best case scenario the use of this fulfillment interface automates your third-party deliveries almost entirely.

Third-Party Deliveries without Direct Fulfillment interface

It's only rarely the case that you ship items directly from your manufacturer to your customer? You do not need a high level of automation? Then, following documentation provides you with various solutions:

1. Your supplier himself is using pixi* and you simply introduce and manage additional bins at already existing external storage ('Location'). Via picklist profiles you can then define whether you are shipping from your own warehouse (= your storage bins), or whether the supplier sends the items from his warehouse (= his storage bins). We call this method "storage in storage". See: Shipping from external storage.

2. Alternatively, you generate an invoice directly in pixi* for this order without picking process and manually send the invoice to the supplier. The invoice is then used to request the independent shipment of the items from the supplier's warehouse to your customer. See: Handling of third-party supplier deliveries.

The following documentation describes the handling of third-party deliveries without a direct fulfillment interface in more detail.

Shipping from an external warehouse

Stock management

For the individual processes to work in pixi*, it is necessary to manage the stock levels of the external warehouse in pixi*. There are 2 possible variants:

• Storage in storage

• Direct picking in the external storage

Variant A - Storage in storage

The first and simpler option is to keep a warehouse in the warehouse, i.e. a certain area in the external warehouse is reserved for the mail order company. The goods from the external warehouse (e.g. from the supplier) are transferred to this area. The first and simpler variant is to manage storage in storage, so that a certain storage area in the external location is reserved for the online retailer. In this storage area, the goods are moved from external storage (e.g. of the supplier).

For this purpose, a new storage location is created in pixi*. The storage is located in the 001 Location of the normal pixi* warehouse.

• Advantages: The stock is exclusively reserved for the retailer.

• Disadvantages:

  • The external storage at the supplier's location is managed via pixi*. The supplier can't control external stock inventories using their own warehouse management, can't manage shipping processes with the in-house ERP, unless the stock levels in external storage are synchronized via the pixi* API, as described in variant B.

  • Picklist profiles must generated with great care, so that items from your in-house storage location appear on "your" picklists only.

  • Orders that contain items which exist in both storage locations require a well thought out management: Who picks and ships these goods? This requires a logical process / workflow and a decision.

  • Orders that can't be processed in their entirety at either of both storage locations must be managed separately via partial deliveries. This might include manual work steps, such as a manual overwrite to enforce the prinitng of an invoice print for the first partial delivery.

  • It's not possible to maintain separate minimum stock levels for both storage locations, since minimum storage quantities are stored per location and both storage areas are managed on the same 'Location'.

  
  

Filling up stock using „storage in storage“

If only certain items are shipped from the external storage location, the external storage can be replenished with a specific supplier using the supplier order proposal. For this purpose, the items are assigned to the supplier and the order proposal is then sent as a list for storage to the external storage location. You can find out more about purchasing here: Purchasing with pixi*

Variant B - Direct picking from external storage

The second option requires a more intricate integration with the external storage location, but also offers advantages due to a simpler process and fewer work steps. The external location is still managed completely by a service provider / supplier. The stock levels of the third-party storage are transmitted at fixed intervals (the shorter the better) via pixi* API to pixi*.

Shipping processing

Boxes

For external storage locations you have to create boxes. You can do this yourself in the pixi* Control Center, or you can do so by using our support.

See also: Boxes for shipping

Variant 1: Normal shipping

When picking, in both variants you proceed as follows:

For our example, assume that the storage area A-D is the normal storage location, E is the external location.

• A picklist is created with a filter on the storage area of the "storage in storage". The filter is set to E-01 to E-10.

• A picklist for the normal storage area is to be created directly after. The filter is set to A-01 to D-10.

Now you create a picklist without filter for the storage location. On this picklist there are all the mixed orders - where items are partly stored in-house and partly in external storage. The items from the external and the in-house storage must then be merged and scanned together.

The picklists must always be generated in the above order. You can work with additional filters, but always in the same order as above.

See also: Picklist Generation

Variant 2: Partial delivery

There is also the possibility to pick an order consisting of 2 items, with one item in the external and one in-house storage in the form of 2 partial deliveries. The priority here is on the external stock, i.e. if an item is available both in your warehouse and in the external warehouse, it is processed in external storage and shipped from there.

Proceed as follows:

• Create a picklist with the filter on the external location, choosing not to include partial orders.

• Create a picklist with the filter on the in-house storage, choosing not to include partial orders.

• Create a picklist with the filter on the external storage, choosing to include partial orders.

• Create a picklist with the filter on the in-house storage, choosing to include partial orders.

First of all, orders are picked which are either stored in-house or external storage. In a second step, all partial deliveries are picked per warehouse thereafter.

It is of course possible to switch step 3 and step 4 or steps 1 and 2. Then the priority is placed on the in-house storage.

See also: Picklist Generation

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Handling of third-party deliveries via supplier

This procedure is best used for the fulfillment, if you only very rarely ship items directly from the manufacturer or distributor to your customers.

1. Open the pixi* Shipping app.

2. Access the Direct invoice printing tab.

3. Deactivate by checking the box "Only if all items available".

4. Select the items which are to be shipped via the supplier (box on righthand-side of item).

5. Click "Create invoice".

6. The invoices are now generated.

7. Forward the invoices to the supplier.

8. Once the supplier confirms the shipment, complete the Ship-Out using the invoice number. This triggers the sending of the shipping email and debiting of the invoice.

The rest of the order is processed as per usual.

Notes:
- For printing of the invoice, the template of the delivery note must be installed on the respective computer.
- If you want to generate the invoice in PDF-format, the invoice PDF can be sent to the supplier.
- If orders contain items that you want to ship from in-house storage and other items of the same order are to be shipped from your supplier / manufacturer viaFulfillment, then this workflow is potentially not suitable. Here we recommend the use of our fulfillment features.
- Please make sure you are using the correct settings in the Control Center to avoid an automated reduction of your inventory when using the "Direct invoice printing".
- Storing the tracking number, which is communicated to you by your manufacturer / supplier, is not provided for in this process.

See also: Direct invoice printing

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