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Order Routing by Vendor Priority

Vendor Priority routing lets you rank your vendors. When a product is mapped to more than one vendor, the order goes to the highest-ranked vendor that carries it. Use it when you have a preferred supplier and only want to use the others as backups.

Set it up

  1. Go to Sites, click your site, then click Order Routing.
  2. In Order Routing Method, select Vendor Priority.
  3. Under Vendor Priority, click Add Field, choose a vendor and enter its priority number.
  4. Add a row for each vendor you want to rank. The lowest number is the highest priority, so give your preferred vendor 1, your first backup 2, and so on.
  5. Choose the options below, then click Update Order Routing.

You can rank just one vendor or all of them. If none of a product's vendors is ranked, Spark Shipping uses the vendor with the most stock when Check stock is on, otherwise the first vendor the product was mapped to.

Options

Check stock (Check vendor has enough stock to fulfill order) When checked, Spark Shipping skips vendors that don't have enough stock for the quantity ordered: if your top vendor is out of stock, the order goes to the next vendor in your ranking that has enough. If no ranked vendor has enough, the order goes to the vendor with the most stock, or to the first vendor the product was mapped to when every vendor is out of stock. When unchecked, the ranking is followed regardless of stock.

Send as few shipments as possible (Sending fewer shipments will be given preference to vendor priority) When checked, Spark Shipping tries to send the whole order to as few vendors as possible, even if that means using a lower-ranked vendor for some items. This can save on shipping costs when an order has several items. When unchecked, each item goes to its highest-ranked vendor, which can split the order.

Good to know

  • A product mapped to only one vendor always goes to that vendor.
  • For super bundles, Spark Shipping prefers a single vendor that carries every item in the bundle, choosing the highest-ranked one.
  • You can still send a single line to a different vendor with Override Vendor on the order line. See Processing Orders: Partial Orders and Overriding Pre-Selected Vendors.

For the other routing methods, see Routing Orders: How Spark Shipping makes the decision to route orders.