Drop-ship orders

Where

Purchase Transactions → Drop-Ship Orders

Plan

Professional and above

Permission

Purchasing → Drop Ship Order

A drop-ship order records that a customer bought something from you and the supplier is posting it to them directly. The goods never reach your shelf, so your stock is untouched throughout — which is correct, and worth knowing if you are wondering why nothing moved.

Every drop-ship order belongs to a sale. There is no such thing as a standalone one.

How to raise a drop-ship order

Some businesses have these created automatically when a sale completes, if the product has a nominated drop-ship supplier. To raise one by hand:

1. Go to Purchase Transactions → Drop-Ship Orders.
2. Click New drop-ship.
3. Choose the Location and the Supplier.
4. In Sale ID, paste the identifier of the sale this fulfils. This is required.
5. Type the Ship-to contact and Ship-to address.
6. Add Notes and save.

Two boxes here need care

Sale ID is an identifier, not a name — there is no customer or sale picker, so you have to find the sale first and copy its ID.

Ship-to address is free text and is not checked against the customer’s record. Nothing fills it in for you and nothing catches a typo — and this is the address your supplier will post to. Read it back before saving.

How to move it through its stages

Open the row menu and click Update status.

Stage	What it means	What you must enter
Pending	Raised, supplier not yet told	—
PO issued	A purchase order has gone to the supplier	—
Shipped	The supplier has despatched it	Carrier and Tracking number, both required
Delivered	It reached the customer	—
Failed	It went wrong	A Failure reason

A failed order can be re-issued and tried again.

Nobody but you sets “Delivered”

There is no carrier tracking and no supplier feedback. Marking an order delivered is your own staff ticking a box, so treat it as a claim rather than a confirmation.

How to cancel one

Open the row menu, click Update status and choose Cancelled.

Cancelling does not cancel the supplier’s purchase order

When the order was issued, a real purchase order went to your supplier. Cancelling the drop-ship order records the cancellation and nothing else — that purchase order is still live, and your supplier may still ship and invoice you.

Go to Purchase Orders and cancel it yourself.

Once shipped, it cannot be cancelled at all

A shipped order can only go on to Delivered or Failed. There is no cancel. If the customer backs out after despatch, handle it as a supplier return and a customer refund.

What to watch out for

• A drop-ship order posts nothing to your accounts. No liability to the supplier and no amount owed by the customer come from this document. What you owe arises from the purchase order when it is invoiced; what the customer owes comes from the sale.
• Marking it delivered creates no bill. Chase the supplier’s invoice yourself.
• A delivered order can still be deleted. There is no protection on the delete action at any stage, so treat Delete carefully.
• No approvals. Unlike most purchasing documents, drop-ship orders are never approval-gated — only permissions apply.
• Only pending orders can be edited.
• Needs a connection.

Related

• Purchase orders
• Deliveries — when you deliver from your own stock
• Supplier returns