One of the most consistently popular integrations for Zoey has been with ShipStation, which offer a number of solutions for fulfilling orders and doing so in bulk, bringing shipment information back into Zoey for buyers to be kept updated.
However, one of the challenges that has persisted is that the integration took a more B2C-centric approach to Ecommerce, meaning that certain scenarios, such as orders that are paid for later, were more difficult to manage.
As part of our continued efforts to make B2B Ecommerce simpler, we’ve implemented four important improvements to facilitate B2B Ecommerce while leveraging ShipStation’s capabilities to its fullest extent.
1. Allow ShipStation to Tell Zoey to Capture Payments for Only Credit Card Orders on Shipment
In its earlier incarnation, the Zoey/ShipStation integration could in some cases only process orders that had already been marked paid. Meanwhile, some of our sellers do not capture payment until an order is shipped.
In other cases ShipStation could automatically mark an order as paid upon shipment, but that could introduce issues when you have yet to charge a card, or it would mark terms and offline orders as paid that had yet to be paid.
With this change, you can have ShipStation still trigger a card charge for credit card orders on shipment, while ignoring terms and offline payment methods, which will be collected in some other form.
2. Prevent ShipStation from Capturing Payment on Terms and Offline Payment Methods
Many B2B businesses use a variety of ways for capturing payment, such as Net Terms, Offline payments such as Check or Wire Transfer, or Purchase Orders.
With the separation of card payments from other types of payments, this can and will prevent ShipStation from marking those orders as paid, or attempting to charge those orders to a credit card.
3. Allow ShipStation to Send Invoice for Orders on Terms and Offline Payment Methods
For those terms and offline payment methods, instead of attempting to capture payment, ShipStation can now send an invoice from Zoey’s billing system, at the same time offering the ability to collect those payments from credit card or PayPal.
For companies that invoice at the time of shipment, this offers another B2B-centric method for collecting payments while still being able to leverage the power of ShipStation’s simple and friendly order processing solutions.
4. Order History Updates Now Offer More Details Regarding ShipStation Interactions
With these changes, we’ve also updated the Order History logging to be more transparent about why an order was marked Paid, Invoiced, or left alone by ShipStation. This can help businesses where the rules may not be configured properly, and help identify what needs to be updated to resolve any issues.
We particularly expect this will be helpful at the beginning, as Zoey merchants review and configure these new options.
Zoey and ShipStation: A Potent Combination
ShipStation is one of the earliest and most consistently popular add-ons for Zoey, given its affordability (starting at just $9/month), and its ability to handle multi-order fulfillment, shipping labels for common shipping options, and aggregating items to be fulfilled from multiple orders for easier warehouse management of order fulfillment.
To learn more about how you can leverage Zoey’s best-in-breed B2B Ecommerce capabilities with ShipStation’s order fulfillment capabilities, chat with our sales team today:
