UPS Shipping Guide for WooCommerce Multi Vendor with Dokan
In this article, we will show you how to fulfill orders using UPS on a WooCommerce Multi-Vendor store. We will be using Dokan to set up a multi-vendor store and use WooCommerce UPS Shipping Plugin with Print Label to fulfill the orders.
Order fulfillment gets complicated when it comes to multiple vendors selling multiple products in a single online store because each vendor has to fulfill orders on their own. So it becomes essential to have a good shipping solution that can seamlessly automate live shipping rates from each vendor, and help you generate shipping labels based on the vendor’s address.
There are a bunch of plugins out there that help you set up a marketplace with multiple vendors. What’s even great is when you combine these plugins with a robust shipping plugin like the UPS Shipping plugin which offers a great order fulfillment experience to you as well as your vendors.
WordPress Plugins Necessary to Streamline Shipping on your Multi-Vendor Marketplace
The following plugins are required to streamline the shipping process on your multi-vendor store. Please read along to know how they work together and provide a great multi-vendor shipping experience.
WooCommerce UPS Shipping Plugin with Print Label:
The WooCommerce UPS Shipping Plugin is a type of plugin that will help you completely automate UPS shipping. It displays the real-time rate on the Cart/Checkout page and allows you to directly pay the postage and print the shipping labels. You can also choose the box packing method and automatically share the tracking information with your customers.
Please note that the choice of the shipping plugin entirely depends on your business needs. So, if you find FedEx to be a better choice then you can choose the WooCommerce FedEx Shipping plugin. And if your store is using multiple carriers you can choose Multi-Carrier Shipping Plugin for WooCommerce.
Dokan Multivendor Plugin:
As we had mentioned earlier, Dokan is possibly one of the best multi-vendor plugins out there. But what we didn’t mention is the list of features that make this plugin so special and popular among many store owners. To begin with, vendors can exercise a whole lot of flexibility with their products by managing themselves. Your vendors can categorize, define sale prices, offer coupons, and do a lot.
Both you and your vendors can check out the information on the admin side. They can find out the total sales, new orders, pending orders, completed orders, and many more. The plugin represents this along with the charts and bars representation, which is very convenient. The plugin also comes with a built-in SEO feature that allows your vendors to create an online presence of their products. As you might know that search engines detect keywords and the site with more keywords is usually placed higher in the search results.
WooCommerce Multi Vendor Add-on Plugin:
The WooCommerce Multi Vendor Add-on plugin will act as a bridge and lets your vendors set up their UPS shipping account. You can also change the way the Cart behaves when two products from two different vendors fall into the cart. To be specific, the plugin has two options – Split and sum, and Split and separate will be explained to you in detail later.
How do these plugins work together?
The WooCommerce UPS Shipping Plugin has been made compatible with the Dokan Multivendor plugin. Which means that the plugins operate together seamlessly. Below is the flow that shows how the two plugins work together.
Setting up vendors on your WooCommerce
The process of installing the plugins and configuring them is quite simple. You just need to download and install the Dokan Multivendor plugin. The plugin then guides you through the setup process and allows you to configure it on the way.
You can follow the steps given in the following document to set up vendors for your store.
Once you are done installing the plugin, you would have to set up the rules for the vendors. To do that, you need to go to WooCommerce > Dokan > Settings. Here you have multiple settings that you would need to choose and configure. You can choose the Dashboard appearance, define the commission percentage, set up withdrawal methods, etc.
How to Add vendors?
You can add vendors yourself on WordPress’s backend or vendors can request from the front end of the website.
To add vendors from the backend you need to go to WooCommerce > Users > Add New. Add the user and assign him the role of the vendor as shown in the image below:
Or Vendors can Register from the front end of the WooCommerce store. They have to go to the My Account page and register as a Vendor.
Vendor’s address configuration
The vendor should add his Warehouse address, these will be the pickup location for UPS. Real-time rates will also be calculated on this basis. To add the vendor address you have to go to My Account > Addresses and add a shipping address.
How can Vendors add and manage the product?
To add and manage the products vendors have to go to the Vendor’s dashboard > Products Here you can see all your products and also Add New Products as shown in the image.
Now you can install the Multi-Vendor Ad-On.
Install the Multi-Vendor Add-On plugin along with Dokan
After you have set up the Dokan plugin, you need to install another plugin called the Advanced Shipping For WooCommerce Multi-Vendor Plugin. As discussed earlier this acts as the bridge and lets vendors add their carrier account details.
Vendor’s UPS Account Details.
To add UPS Account details go to Vendors Dashboard > Edit Account Details > Add UPS Account details.
Shipping rates on cart
Go to WooCommerce > Settings > PlugiHive Multi-Vendor. You will find Split and sum, and Split and separate options on the plugin settings page.
If you choose the first option, i.e Split and sum, then the rate would be shown as the sum of the individual shipping costs of the products. And if you choose the Split and separate option then the prices would be shown separately. You can refer to the following image to see how it looks on the Cart page.
| Split and Sum |
Split and Separate
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In the above image, the Cart page includes two different items from two separate vendors. This is a nice feature as it allows your customers to have options over the shipping methods. You can also refer to this article that explains more about this plugin.
Setting up UPS Shipping on your WooCommerce
Once you are done setting up the Dokan plugin, you need to set up the UPS Shipping Plugin. This is fairly easy to set it up and start using the plugin. You just need to keep a few things in mind. For instance, if you are going to allow your vendors to pack their items into boxes based on weight then you have to choose the Weight-based packing method. You need to enter the UPS credentials, and your address, choose the packing method, enable the shipment tracking feature, etc.
You can follow the UPS plugin setting up articles:
You need to change a couple of settings within UPS for multi-vendor shipping.
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Set Ship From Address Preference to vendor address
- Set Send Shipping Label via Email to Vendor
Order Fulfillment using UPS
Now, let us assume that a customer is going to purchase two products from two different vendors. The customer will add the items to the cart and would proceed to the Cart page in order to see the shipping rates and fulfill the order.
You can see that the real-time UPS shipping rates appear on the cart page. These rates are calculated by UPS and are returned from their API. Now WooCommerce store admin can process the orders and generate the shipping label.
As soon as the WooCommerce store admin generates the shipping labels Vendors will receive an email containing the shipping label.
| Vendor 1 | Vendor 2 |
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Final Words
The combination of these plugins can help you achieve almost all multivendor business ideas. It provides a lot of advantages and benefits of the online model without any hassle.
This article has acquainted you with some of the efficient WordPress marketplace solutions. These include a range of plugins and themes designed to produce optimum results for a marketplace model. Let us know if you have a suggestion or query.