What it solves
When a part is not in the warehouse, the order can be fulfilled directly from the supplier to the customer. The platform turns that process into a controlled flow: the team assigns the items, the supplier handles them from their portal and the ERP finds out on its own when the shipment leaves.
How it works
The team assigns an order's items to a supplier from the ERP, or the system does it automatically when the order's tracking label is generated: if an item has an open shortage purchase order, it goes to the supplier of that order, as long as they have active portal access. For manual assignment, the system suggests the supplier that already has the part on an open order or, failing that, whoever has it in stock at the lowest cost.
The supplier logs in to their portal, sees the order with its fulfillment note and, when shipping, records the tracking number and the carrier. The ERP copies the tracking number to the order, moves it to shipped, notifies the customer and closes the purchase order as delivered direct, without adding inventory, once every item is covered.
Controls
- The portal uses a different session from the ERP: the ERP rejects portal tokens and the portal checks on every request that the user is still active.
- A supplier cannot see or open another supplier's orders.
- To avoid duplicate purchases, only items from orders that already have a tracking label and whose purchase order has not been sent yet are assigned; the automatic purchasing cut-off can hold eligible items for a few hours so the supplier can fulfill them.
- If the supplier cancels with a reason, the team gets a notification and the items go back into the purchasing flow.
Carriers
The ERP generates labels with Estafeta and FedEx. In dropshipping the supplier can use those labels or record their own.
