What is Vendor Managed Shipping and how do you set it up?

In this article, we will explain vendor-managed shipping which is a part of the Advance shipping functionality, and also run through how you can set it up.

In Marketcube using the vendor manage shipping charges, your vendors set shipping charges themselves for their products on the basis of the Product, Destination, Product Price, Product Quantity. On the other hand, the operator can also set up the shipping charges on behalf of the vendors so once an order is placed, each one of the vendor receives the shipping amount they set based on the various conditions.

This functionality provides users with an option to set up shipping costs using the Marketcube app which can be used as a third-party calculated shipping rate.

Note: Only operators on Advance Shopify Plan can access our Vendor Managed Shipping Functionality as Shopify only allows third Party shipping rates on its Advance Plan.

In order to use this Functionality on any other Shopify plan, you can contact the Shopify support team and can ask them to enable this option for you after paying some extra charges.

How to set up vendor managed Shipping:

1.Log into the Operator's App. >> Click on the Settings Icon.

2. Click on the show under the Shipping & Fulfilments pannel. >> Click on Shipping.

3. From the dropdown, click on Vendor Manage shipping charges.

This option will open more settings using which the Operator can have a look at and decide how they want their vendors to set up their own shipping rates.

We will discuss each option in detail below as shown by screenshots:

Allowing vendors to set up shipping.
- Allow all your vendors the ability to add and update shipping Rules and Offers (We will talk about Rules and offers in detail in our next article).
- Allow only selected vendors the ability to add and update shipping Rules and Offers.
  - In order to allow the vendors to update shipping, the operator needs to click Allow selected vendors.
  - Need to type at least the first three characters of the vendor's brand name.
  - The operator needs to select the boxes from the available options.
- Using this option, the operator can either:
Charging shipping from customers or the operator pays the vendor for shipping.

Operators have an option to whether charge shipping rates from their customers or pay shipping rates to their vendors themself.

If the operators do not want to charge any shipping rates to their customers they can tick the box highlighted above. This would mean customers will not pay any shipping charge but the operator will have to pay that amount to their vendor for shipping the product.

Cumulative Shipping Charge: Charge cumulative shipping charges for selected or all vendors, This will allow your vendors to charge per product, not per product quantity.
This setting aggregates the shipping charge on the basis of vendors. This will allow your vendors to charge shipping per product wise and not on the basis of product quantity. An operator can allow all their vendors to charge cumulative shipping or can allow specific vendors to be able to do this.

To make sense of this all, let us use a scenario:

Rob is a vendor for an Operator who has cumulated the shipping.
Rob offers 2 Products- Lemon Grass and Almonds
Rob wants to charge $20 to ship Lemongrass and $10 to ship Almonds.
A customer placed an order for Lemon Grass (Quantity 2) and Almonds (1 Quantity)

If the shipping is not cumulated for this vendor, the customer would pay shipping as
Lemon Grass-> 20*2=$40
Almond 10*1= $10
Total shipping paid by customer ---------------------> =$50
But, if the shipping is accumulated, the customer will pay the shipping on the basis of the product and not on the basis of the product quantity. So, irrespective of the product quantity in a line item, here, lemongrass customers will pay only $20 as shipping.

Lemon Grass ( 2 quantity but shipping is aggregated) = $20
Almond =$10
Total shipping paid by customer ---------------------> =$30

Hide/show shipping description from customers at the point of checkout:

Whenever the operator creates any Shipping Band or whenever their vendors create any rules and offer using those bands, they add a certain description for that band/rule/offer which describes the shipping charge.

Operators have the ability to hide or show the description from the end customers at the point of checkout. By Checking the highlighted box below they can show the description and when it is unchecked, customers will not see the description.

Aggregate Shipping Charges:
This option provides operators with the ability to charge aggregate shipping for selected or all shipping bands, rules, and offers. This will allow shipping to be charged per product and not per product quantity.
Operators can allow aggregate shipping on all types of shipping. This will charge shipping by aggregating all the shipping types on the basis of the product.
Using this functionality, Operators can aggregate some specific shipping types.
For Example,
Scenario 1:
As an operator, Ronnie sells 3 Products:
i.) Shea Butter
ii.) Clove Oil
iii.) Almond Oil
In order to ship these products, the operator created a shipping rule to charge $10 to ship Shea butter, $15 to ship Clove Oil, and $20 to ship Almond oil.

The customer placed an order for these products:
Shea Butter- 2 Quantity
Clove Oil- 2 Quantity
Almond Oil- 3 Quantity

If the operator has aggregated all the shipping rules, then the customer will pay shipping for the products and not for product quantity. So shipping, in this case, will not be
(10*2= $20) + (15*2= $30 )+ (20*3= $60)= $110
But, it will be
$10 for shea butter's 2 Quantity
$15 for clove oil's 2 quantity
$20 for almond oil's 3 quantity
So the customer, in this case, will pay only $(10+15+20)= $45 as shipping cost.
After setting up all the details, click on Submit button to save these settings.