Multiple shipping origins

[rosslavery]

I've encountered this twice now. For larger clients that I'm developing for, they have multiple warehouses across 2+ countries. The warehouse the product ships from is determined by proximity to the customer's address - either through the cart, or as defined in their account.

What I've been doing in the meantime is hacking apart the UPS / Fedex / etc. extensions to override the "get_base_country()" value as needed, base on the users address input.

Is this something anyone else has come across? Is this something the WC team might look to support in a future release? I understand there are some fairly significant code implications to adding a feature like this, but I thought it would be worth a mention.

I suppose it depends on if WC is looking to mainly target smaller businesses with a single origin, or if the concept of "warehouses" is even something being considered. Perhaps with a future version of the table rate shipping extension?

[mikejolley]

This comes into our larger plan, but nothing short term. If you've seen Table Rate Shipping's 'zones' you'll see this is something we could eventually use for all methods (allowing a different origin based on zone).

[rosslavery]

Thanks for the response Mike, looking forward to it.

[ragulka]

@rabhw I am actually working on a commercial plugin to add Warehouses support for WC. It is pretty much feature-complete - it allows you to set stock quantities in different warehouses and lets the customer choose, where to pick up the goods if using Local Pickup as the delivery method. It would be possible to determine which warehouse to ship from using any shipping method by extending the plugin. Let me know if you would be interested in testing it.

PLEASE NOTE: I am no longer accepting beta testers for this plugin, thanks.

[clifmo]

@ragulka I would love to test it out as I'm being asked to develop the exact same functionality. Please contact me!

[viraljetani]

@ragulka I would like to test the warehouses plugin for one of my projects I am working on.

Let me explain the scenario of what exactly I am trying to do. I am doing a grocery store which will first work into 2 cities in the beginning so there will be 2 seperate warehouses and seperate stocks and shipping operations. Both will be handled by their respective regional manager of this cities. Is this your plugin can work for? I would be glad if you can point me to a good solution.

Thanks.

[cosmicktechnologies]

@ragulka We are in need of this shipping plugin. Name your cost and possible availability here. Can we get a full feature list.

[deankeen]

@rabhw , @ragulka , @cosmicktechnologies

Likewise...does anyone have this available yet? I'd like to buy it for my store. Thanks!

[eclipseic]

Is there any update on this? Really need this for a new store. Thanks!

[deankeen]

@eclipseic - The best solution I could find for this problem was to have a custom job done for around $600 if I remember correctly. I didn't do it because of the cost.

[cosmicktechnologies]

I just bought a release by ignitewoo and it works good as expected with multiple origins, It was release around a week ago, so first release had a few bugs that i reported but since then fixed. http://ignitewoo.com/woocommerce-extensions-plugins/woocommerce-ups-drop-shipping/

[deankeen]

Wow, thanks @cosmicktechnologies!! That looks really promising! I owe ya one.

[eclipseic]

thanks @deankeen and @cosmicktechnologies

Question for @cosmicktechnologies : This sounds awesome. But in reading the description, a llittle confused. Is there an option to not have it set per-product but based on zone. For example: If someone in montana orders, it ships from illinois. But if someone from New York orders, it ships from maryland ?

[cosmicktechnologies]

@eclipseic No this plugin I am recommending above does not do that, but I already owned a UPS plugin that does. It was UPS warehouse shipping in codecanyon. This was my original testing plugin. This basically will choose the closest warehouse by zip. So you can have Product A are 3 warehouse but based on zip code it will choose the closest one. Here is the plugin. I have just about tried them and have about 25 woo sites out there so I really have run across most all scenarios. Some we have to custom write our own and some we have modified opensource.

http://codecanyon.net/item/ups-shipping-method-for-woocommerce/4495975

[eclipseic]

Thanks @cosmicktechnologies !!!! Awesome!!!

[eclipseic]

Hey @cosmicktechnologies , I have this plugin you suggested installed, but it seems to just be picking whichever warehouse was last in the warehouse list, and not by zip. Have you run into this? Something I am missing? Thanks much!

[cosmicktechnologies]

@eclipseic I only ran into that with themes that do caching. Meaning unless I completely clear my cache and re-add items to the cart, it was keeping the same rates. I'm partially at fault depending how we developed or used other themes that end up caching. I have it running good now on about 4 different sites. Plus depending how your theme is developed I was getting false information in the cart review section. I was using actual checkout as my testing page each time because the cart page is derived differently. So do you testing on the checkout page itself for starters, make sure you clear your cache and re-add the products each test, and lastly I hate that Im always logged in as admin when testing to the address information is pre-populated. I always use a different browser so i can get the true customer presentation and manually type my address to watch the rates calculate via ajax.

[eclipseic]

Thanks @cosmicktechnologies ! I will give that a try!

[eclipseic]

Hey @cosmicktechnologies the scenario has changed a bit. Long story short, looking for some help now tying this store in via api to their fulfillment center. I have the info from fulfillment center. They have said others have tied into them with woocommerce. I am looking to maybe outsource this quick piece. Are you familiar with this or point in right direction?

[cosmicktechnologies]

@eclipseic Don't say quick piece lightly my friend. We're actually integrating one right now and its a pain in the arse. Let me be more specific, the fulfillment company that we are working with, there API is horrible so its not making our job easier with mappings and the way they want to receive the data. So to answer your question yes I am familiar with it, and I would take a look at the spec sheet they provided you, to help advise. You can always email me direct craig@cosmicktechnologies.com. Hey some fulfillment places will actually accepted a batched daily CSV file as well which does make things a little easier but then its not really real time. Some scenarios real time is not needed as daily orders can be batched mid day for some of our customers. We just recently got through a woo site and had to sync 6000 products online from QuickBooks POS. The customer had less then a 1MB upload. It was pain staking process. Talk soon.

[eclipseic]

thanks @cosmicktechnologies Great info. i will email you directly. thanks again!

[wgsieber]

I have a really similar problem with a store I'm trying to build. I'm wondering if there is a solution to my specific problem. I have a variety of products that I am trying to sell, but I am not warehousing anything myself. All the product would come from one of about 10 vendor locations. Is there any kind of way to assign the product to one of these locations an origin? On top of that, some products require special packaging and it would be useful to have an added cost for just those items. Right now I am using the FedEx API from woothemes. I prefer FedEx, but I could use UPS or anything that can generate comparable shipping cost would be awesome. Does something already exist that I just can't find? or is there something someone has been working on that I can try out? Thanks, any useful information is greatly appreciated.

[deankeen]

@wgsieber Did you see @cosmicktechnologies link above?

http://ignitewoo.com/woocommerce-extensions-plugins/woocommerce-ups-drop-shipping/