Shipping from different locations (drop shipping)

[MalcolmV8]

Coming from Hikashop and switching to Virtuemart one thing I'm really struggling with is shipping.  Virtuemart seems to lack horribly in this area but I'm trying to make it work as it does have a lot of other strengths that I really like.

Unfortunately Virtuemart does not support querying common shipping companies like USPS/FedEx/UPS with weight and dimensions to get shipping quotes.  It just has one plugin where you put in weights and even that seems buggy while playing with it   (or perhaps some user error in configuration is at hand too).

A big problem for me is our business does a large amount of drop shipping which means the products themselves ship from different locations around the country so I need to accommodate that per product or even just by manufacture would be fine.

I did some googling and I found a few places that make extensions that you can buy that allow querying of USPS etc. but none of their documentation seems to support drop shipping or specifying a different source zip code per product / manufacture that I can find.  Unfortunately you have to buy each of these extensions and they're about $50 or more each so it's not practical to go buying them all to test.

Does anyone else drop ship?  How do you deal with different source addresses on shipping?

Thanks for any pointers or guidance
Malcolm

[GJC Web Design]

Unfortunately Virtuemart does not support querying common shipping companies like USPS/FedEx/UPS with weight and dimensions to get shipping quotes.

there are commercial plugins available for all these shippers

[MalcolmV8]

Unfortunately Virtuemart does not support querying common shipping companies like USPS/FedEx/UPS with weight and dimensions to get shipping quotes.

there are commercial plugins available for all these shippers

Yes and if you continued to read my message I need one that allows specifying different source zip codes from where the various products will drop ship.  That I'm unable to find.

[GJC Web Design]

in e.g. the alatak_upsrates plugin you can filter by categories... the theory being you add different dropshipped address articles to different hidden VM cats and filter that way

but the perennial problem is mixed carts

I assume the solution is to hack the plugin to presort the cart into "groups" and do a separate get cost for each and aggregate

I assume its do-able but guess the demand is slight so no has has had the incentive to produce such a plugin

[ssnobben]

in e.g. the alatak_upsrates plugin you can filter by categories... the theory being you add different dropshipped address articles to different hidden VM cats and filter that way

but the perennial problem is mixed carts

I assume the solution is to hack the plugin to presort the cart into "groups" and do a separate get cost for each and aggregate

I assume its do-able but guess the demand is slight so no has has had the incentive to produce such a plugin

ok that was a pity bcs I just check to use Virtuemart for a drop shipping project and have this working smoothly would be great though drop-shipping is something thats growing strongly now

[MalcolmV8]

Yes it's to bad because drop shipping is a huge part of business now days.  I have 30+ vendors that drop ship and its growing all the time.  I contacted the guys who wrote the USPS/FedEx plugin for Virtuemart to see if they could modify it to support different source zip codes for drop shipping.

They informed me I'd need to install Joomla Virtuemart Multi Vendor Marketplace which is $100 and setup my products as though they were been sold by different vendors.  Presumably to get different source zip codes in place for all the products.  Then for $900 they would make the USPS/FedEx modules read in the different source codes.  Sheesh $1000 option.  Hikashop does all this already in the most basic free version.

So for now I've just changed my business model to have "free" shipping and having to build it into the prices.

[GJC Web Design]

How do assign different shipping addresses to your products?

By category?

[MalcolmV8]

How do assign different shipping addresses to your products?

By category?

I don't see a way to do it in Virtuemart but if there was it should be by Manufacture.  In Hikashop products belonged to a Manufacture (same as Virtuemart) and then it also had a warehouse level above that and you'd add manufacture's to a warehouse.  You were able to assign each warehouse a zip code which would act as the source zip code for where that product is shipping.
I never really had a need for the warehouse level but if you had a manufacture that had multiple locations and would ship from various zip codes that would be needed.

[Studio 42]

Is your problem the calculated shipping cost ?
I know that some online shop change the prices depending the product location.
Eg. Main location is UK
other locations France, Germany, USA and this are child products with other prices to include the shipping price(and child can at same have another manufacturer, other taxes ...).
Of course, this does not work to estimate the final shipping cost of UPS or FedEx, but is a working solution.
Another solution is to work with multivendors, but i'm not sure it's not more complex.

P.S: it's not a big task to add a manufacturer filter in the weight/countries shipments plugins

[GJC Web Design]

There are various ways u can "mark" a product as being shipped from a particular postcode (I would think hidden categories perhaps) then have e.g. a table cats->postcodes or a customfield with the source postcode

The trickier problem is with "live" shipping quotes... you need to sort/group a mixed cart and do a call for each separate group using the correct postcode to UPS etc then add them and return the total price

It is possible but it isn't a small job.... perhaps not a $900 job though... 

[Studio 42]

$900 they would make the USPS/FedEx modules read in the different source codes.

You can find some USPS fedEx shipment plugins for Virtuemart, what is the compagny ?
But because you have so many Vendor, spend some money can be not a so bad deal.
Else use simple rules + modify original plugin with manufacturer +child option can be a solution, if vendors do not sold all your products.

[Typhoon365]

Have a look at "VM Shipping by Rules" plug-in.

https://open-tools.net/documentation/shipping-by-rules-plugins-for-virtuemart.html
https://open-tools.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=54&Itemid=243

It allows you to set shipping rules based on product id's, categories, manufacturers, packaging weight, actual weight, number of products, postcode ranges, etc.

Might not meet your needs fully as it doesn't have integration with couriers for live price quotes.  But it does allow you to set different flat or calculated pricing based on many factors.

We use a couple drop-ship suppliers also, this plug-in is helping us a lot in setting different shipping rates.  Unfortunately, you do end up with a lot of rules that you need to maintain.

There is a free version you can start off with. And then there is a paid Advanced version that provides more functonality.

Hope it might help.

[GJC Web Design]

The lack of live quotes will be the deal breaker here...  in my experience the majority of my US clients use UPS, USPS or Fedex and require proper integration with these shippers