Drop shipping is when your supplier sends the goods directly to your customer. You take the order and raise the purchase, but nothing passes through your warehouse.
Useful for bulky items you would rather not handle, for stock you do not want to carry, and for anything a supplier can get there faster than you can.
What is different about it
An ordinary line reserves your stock, gets picked off a shelf and ships from your warehouse. A drop-ship line does none of that.
Ordinary line | Drop-ship line | |
Reserves your stock | yes | no |
Appears in Available | reduces it | no effect |
Gets picked and packed | yes | no |
Ships from | your warehouse | your supplier |
Your stock levels do not move at any point on a drop-ship line, because the goods were never yours to hold.
One order can do both
An order can mix them. Four water bottles from your shelf and six helmets straight from the supplier, on the same order for the same customer.
When it does, the order grows a second tab:
Shipment — the lines you are sending
Dropshipment — the lines your supplier is sending
Each tab shows only its own lines, so neither gets in the other's way.
How it flows
Add a drop-ship line → Link it to a vendor PO → Vendor ships → Mark it shipped
Linking creates a real purchase order to your supplier, carrying your customer's address as the delivery address. That PO is the instruction the supplier ships to.