What is drop shipping?
"Drop shipping is a supply chain management technique in which the retailer does not keep goods in stock, but instead transfers customer orders and shipment details to either the manufacturer or a wholesaler, who then ships the goods directly to the customer." - wikipedia
So the main goal with spree_drop_ship is to link products to suppliers and forward orders to the appropriate suppliers.
Once an order is placed for a product that belongs to a supplier a shipment is created for the product's supplier. This shipment is then sent to the supplier (via Email by default). The supplier then follows a link to the shipment within the email where they are prompted to confirm the shipment.
Spree Drop Ship used with Spree Marketplace allows handling payments to your suppliers via ACH direct deposits.
This is still currently a work in progress, and any input is welcome.
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Warning: Upgrading to Spree 2.2.x & 2.3.x when using this extension is not backwards compatible. I have removed the notion of drop ship orders which payments & commission were previously tracked to. Now suppliers simply manage their shipments, and payments & commission are now linked to a payable object i.e. shipment in this case. This means the previous method of determining a suppliers commission is no longer valid, and you will need to migrate your data accordingly.
I'm sorry for the inconvenience this may cause, but I've determined for this extension to meet it's most potential I needed to drastically alter the approach it was taking. I'm still undergoing several more radical changes for Spree 2.3.x that involve moving product management from this extension into the spree_marketplace extension. The goal from the beginning of this extension has been for it to be a very light weight and extensible drop shipping solution. Much of this extension has been made obsolete by split shipping, and line item adjustments within Spree Core itself. Now I feel I can really streamline this extension to take advantage of the recent Spree Core changes, and also move the product management into the marketplace extension as that is really more of what product management is inteded for. The typical drop shipping scenario would simply be a supplier being able to update their shipments they need to fulfill and nothing more.
Here's how to install spree_drop_ship into your existing spree site AFTER you've installed Spree:
Add the following to your Gemfile:
gem 'spree_drop_ship', github: 'spree-contrib/spree_drop_ship'
Make your bundle happy:
bundle install
Now run the generator:
rails g spree_drop_ship:install
Then migrate your database if you did not run during installation generator:
bundle exec rake db:migrate
And reboot your server:
rails s
You should be up and running now!
If you'd like to generate sample data, use the included rake tasks:
rake spree_sample:load # Loads sample data into the store
rake spree_sample:suppliers # Create sample suppliers and randomly link to products
rake spree_sample:drop_ship_orders # Create sample drop ship orders
You can easily use the spec/dummy app as a demo of spree_drop_ship. Just cd
to where you develop and run:
git clone git://github.com/spree-contrib/spree_drop_ship.git
cd spree_drop_ship
bundle install
bundle exec rake test_app
cd spec/dummy
rake db:migrate db:seed spree_sample:load spree_sample:suppliers spree_sample:drop_ship_orders
rails s
Be sure to bundle your dependencies and then create a dummy test app for the specs to run against.
bundle
bundle exec rake test_app
bundle exec rspec spec
- Stock Items should automatically be set to backorderable false if the variant doesnt belong to the stock locations supplier.
- Must allow suppliers to edit their stock location addresses & require it.
- Return Authorization UI
- Better documentation
- related products should only allow suppliers own products to be related
In the spirit of free software, everyone is encouraged to help improve this project.
Here are some ways you can contribute:
- by using prerelease versions
- by reporting bugs
- by suggesting new features
- by translating to a new language
- by writing or editing documentation
- by writing specifications
- by writing code (no patch is too small: fix typos, add comments, clean up inconsistent whitespace)
- by refactoring code
- by resolving issues
- by reviewing patches
Bitcoin donations may be sent to: 1L6akT6Aus9r6Ashw1wDtLg7D8zJCVVZac
Copyright (c) 2012-2014 Jeff Dutil, released under the New BSD License.