Shipping and Order Methods for Product Fulfillment Services

Shipping and Order Methods for Product Fulfillment Services

MOST ORDER FULFILLMENT SERVICES OFFER A VARIETY OF SHIPPING OPTIONS.

Make sure the fulfillment service you select offers all of the shipping options you currently offer your customers and the shipping options that you may want to offer in the future.  Remember turn-around time can very company to company. Each fulfillment warehouse has its own policy regarding order processing. For example some fulfillment centers will ship all orders that arrive before 1pm on the same business day. If you miss the 1pm deadline, the order is shipped the next business day. This could impact your customers if a next-day order is placed after 1pm. In this case, next-day shipping turns out to be two-day shipping.  In addition, order entry methods can be very important when considering a fulfillment service. Some of the most common methods include: forwarding individual order invoices to the warehouse, entering each order on the fulfillment center’s web-based system and emailing an Excel spreadsheet with all orders once a day. Each method has a different effect on your business. For example, you may save money by manually entering orders into a web-based application, but it can be tedious if your business grows to the point where you have more orders than you have time to enter. You may pay a higher price to automatically email each individual invoice to the warehouse, but it may be worth the extra costs to have orders shipped as they arrive. Same-day Pack and ship could give you the edge over your competitor. On the other hand, if you have a high volume of orders, you won’t want to individually enter each order into a web-based system, and you may not want to pay the extra charge of having individual orders emailed to the warehouse. If you don’t mind shipping the next business day, you can send a spreadsheet containing all of your orders once a day. Choose a warehouse that offers an order entry method that meets your business needs and fits your budget.

fulfillment services