Stock what sells, drop-ship the rest
Most stores do both, and the two halves need different things. Stockroom keeps the lines you stock on purchase orders and reorder points, and turns a drop-ship order into a supplier PO that fulfills your customer with the supplier's tracking. Connect the supplier and the whole chain runs on its own.
- Order to PO to supplier
- Supplier ships, customer notified
- Manual approval on any step
The whole chain, from order to tracking
Every hand-off below can wait for your approval instead. Automate the steps you trust and keep a click on the rest.
- An order comes in. A customer buys something you do not stock. Stockroom resolves the supplier from the same vendor and product-tag rules that already assign your products.
- It becomes a purchase order. A drop-ship PO is raised against that supplier at your cost, carrying the order's own line quantities and your customer's shipping address.
- The supplier gets it. A supplier you have connected on Stockroom Network receives it in their own Stockroom, your lines matched to their catalog by the supplier SKUs you already keep. Anyone else gets the PDF by email, as before.
- Their store creates the order. On their side the PO creates the order in their store, in one click or automatically if they have turned that on. They pick and ship it like any other order.
- Your customer hears about it. When they fulfill, the tracking flows back onto your PO and fulfills the Shopify order it came from. Your customer gets your store's own shipping email with the supplier's tracking number in it.
- Or approve any step by hand. Each step is a setting. Review every drop-ship PO before it leaves, or approve the send and let the rest run.
A document your supplier can ship from
The automation runs on an ordinary purchase order, which still works when a supplier is not connected or an order needs a person to check it.
- Start from the order. Create a purchase order straight from a Shopify order, and choose where it ships: your own location, or the customer's address. That choice makes it a drop-ship PO.
- The customer's address, on the PDF. Their name and address print where your warehouse address would be, so a supplier who does not use Stockroom ships to the right address from the same document.
- Only what is still owed. Quantities map line by line from the order and are capped by what it still has outstanding, so an order you part-fulfilled yourself does not ship twice.
- Fulfillment is per shipment. Each shipment on the PO fulfills the source order with its own tracking, so a supplier who splits a delivery across two parcels produces two fulfillments.
- Automatic fulfillment is opt-in. Automatic fulfillment needs a Shopify permission that is not part of the install. Stockroom asks for it when you mark a drop-ship PO as ordered. If you decline, the order still sends and fulfillment stays manual.
- A restock from an order never fulfills. If you picked your own location, that PO is a restock. It does not touch the customer's order, because you still receive those goods yourself.
If you drop-ship everything
Plenty of stores never hold stock. The purchasing side still applies in full. The stock side does not, and Stockroom stays out of your way there.
- Suppliers with details. Every Shopify vendor becomes a supplier with contacts, currency, lead time and payment terms, so you know who to contact about an order without searching your inbox.
- Keep drop-ship SKUs untracked. Most drop-ship variants are already set up this way. Variants with Shopify inventory tracking off are left out of reorder suggestions and the stock warnings on Home. There is no setting to turn on.
- Supplier performance. Open POs, units on order, late deliveries and on-time delivery over the last five dated deliveries, whether the goods went to you or to your customer.
- Spend by supplier. Drop-ship POs are purchases, so they count in vendor purchase history and in spend per currency. Each currency is reported separately, not added together.
- Their price list, on your costs. A supplier connected on Stockroom Network can publish the prices they charge you, under an accept policy you choose. Your costs stay current without a spreadsheet.
- The usual paperwork. Your own PO numbering, per-line discounts, per-line tax rates, shipping and adjustment charges, payment terms with an overdue badge. All of it emails, prints and exports.
Reorder points and landed cost for the lines you stock
The stocked half is where money gets tied up, so it helps to run both halves in one app.
- Reorder points from your own sales. Up to two years of your sales history and each supplier's observed lead time become a reorder point and an order-by date, per location if you hold stock in more than one.
- Landed cost on what you import. Freight, duty and fees allocate into the unit cost at receiving, so the margin on a stocked line includes those costs.
- One PO, several destinations. A single supplier order can feed every location you hold stock at, with the destination on the line and the PDF grouped per delivery address.
- A free-text ship-to for one-off addresses. Any PO can print a custom address - a trade show, a 3PL, a one-off customer - while stock still flows to the Shopify location you chose.
Common questions
Do I have to hold stock for any of this to work?
No. The order-to-supplier-to-customer chain does not need a warehouse. Reorder points, receiving, counts and stock valuation do, so a pure drop-shipper leaves those parts unused. It is the same free app either way.
Will drop-ship items throw off my inventory numbers?
Keep them untracked in Shopify, which is how most drop-ship variants are already configured. Untracked variants are excluded from reorder suggestions and from the stock warnings on Home. A drop-ship purchase order does not yet have inventory rules of its own, so a drop-ship SKU that is inventory-tracked in Shopify is the one case to avoid for now.
Does my customer find out who my supplier is?
Not from Stockroom. Your supplier sees your purchase order with your customer's shipping address on it; your customer gets a shipping notification from your store, carrying the tracking number. What goes inside the parcel is between you and your supplier.
What if my supplier is not on Shopify?
Then they get the purchase order by email as a PDF with your customer's address on it. When they send you tracking, you fulfill the order from the shipment with one button. The automatic half of the chain needs them connected on Stockroom Network. The document half does not.
Is this the same as Shopify Collective?
No. Collective is a marketplace: it finds you suppliers and handles the money between you. Stockroom Network is the document link between you and a supplier you already buy from, where your purchase order becomes their order. Plenty of stores will use both.
Can I still see the tracking myself?
Yes. Every shipment is recorded on the PO with its tracking number, carrier and date, and the PO shows which of them have fulfilled their order. Stockroom does not look up carrier delivery estimates. The tracking number is stored as a record and a link.
Try it on your own catalog
Install Stockroom free from the Shopify App Store. No trials, no credit card.