ZEOS Fulfillment: merchant plugin guide [beta]

About this guide

This guide describes ChannelEngine’s merchant plugin for ZEOS Fulfillment.

Table of contents

Introduction

Requirements

Limitations

Supported features

Supported marketplaces

How to request an account

Settings and configuration

• Setup
• Activation
• Order routing
• Carrier mapping
• Stock

Additional information

Introduction

ZEOS Fulfillment is a solution for fashion and lifestyle brands that wish to utilize Zalando’s fulfillment service to fulfil orders across channels beyond Zalando, in Europe. Using Zalando’s fulfillment centers, return hubs, and carriers across the entire European market, simplify your operations overview by connecting to ZEOS via ChannelEngine.

ChannelEngine offers a plugin to the ZEOS platform that enables you to easily synchronize your ZEOS stock levels with your connected marketplaces and automatically manage orders that ZEOS can fulfill.

Requirements

• The Advanced order management add-on is enabled in your tenant. Check out ChannelEngine: advanced order management [add-on].
• You must already sell on Zalando.
• You must be enrolled in ZFS (Zalando Fulfillment Services). Products that can be fulfilled by ZEOS are sent to Zalando warehouses via the ZFS program.

Limitations

• Merchants can only enable ZEOS on products sold on non-Zalando channels if they are also sold on Zalando.
• If an item is not available in a ZEOS warehouse, then the merchant can backfill orders via an API integration with ChannelEngine, but not via another merchant plugin. For guidance on backfilling orders via API, check out Merchant API: order line fulfillment via multiple systems.
• No other merchant plugins can be active on a tenant that implements the ZEOS plugin.
• Merchants should not acknowledge orders with ZEOS-fulfilled order lines. Otherwise, the orders will neither be exported to nor acknowledged by ZEOS.
• Orders are shipped from the country in which the order was placed, e.g.: if an order is placed on Bol BE, then the order ships from Belgium. Ensure that your order routing rules take this limitation into account. 

Supported features

1. ZEOS is a fulfillment service and therefore does not manage product listings on your connected marketplaces.
2. ZEOS cancels a given order if there is no available stock for one or all lines in the order, depending on your preferred configuration. See the Setup section.
3. ZEOS can approve, deny, or ignore any marketplace cancelation request from Amazon and bol. Marketplace cancelations from other marketplaces that connect to ZEOS are not supported in the ZEOS Fulfillment plugin.

Supported marketplaces

ZEOS supports a select set of marketplaces. The table below lists the countries to which deliveries are supported, per marketplace. If you qualify as a ZEOS partner, and if you use ChannelEngine to connect to one or more of these marketplaces, then you can take advantage of the ZEOS plugin on ChannelEngine.

How to request an account

Send a request to ZEOS. You must reach an agreement with ZEOS in order to utilize ZEOS for fulfillment.

Settings and configuration

Setup

On ZEOS One

On the ZEOS One platform, establish an API connection to ChannelEngine:

1. Go to API Clients, API Client management.
2. Click Create Application.
3. Add ChannelEngine.
4. Use your Zalando Merchant ID
5. Then, generate your:
   • Client Id
   • Client Secret

Save these credentials to complete the connection within the ChannelEngine plugin.

On ChannelEngine

To add the ZEOS plugin to your tenant on ChannelEngine:

1. In the sidebar menu, go to Plugins.
2. Search for the ‘ZEOS’ in the search bar.
3. The ZEOS plugin box appears.
4. On the box, click + Request to configure.

The ChannelEngine team pre-sets your settings in Connection in close collaboration with you and your team.

In Plugin-specific settings, define the fulfillment policy for your connected channels. For each eligible channel, choose one of the following options from the dropdown list:

• Fill all available - if an order matches a ZEOS warehouse, then ZEOS fills all available order lines. Unavailable lines are canceled.
• Fill or kill - if any of the order lines are out of stock, then ZEOS cancels the entire order.

Activation

Continue with the activation in the Activation step.

Once the plugin is activated, ChannelEngine imports ZEOS’s warehouses as Stock locations on ChannelEngine.

Order routing

Finally, create order routing rules between your connected channels and the ZEOS stock location. E.g.: For bol orders, set up an order route named ‘Bol routing’, which is linked to the stock location ZEOS Netherlands.

To enable order routing on ChannelEngine:

1. Reach out to ChannelEngine's Support team to enable the advanced order management feature on ChannelEngine. This is an add-on that must be requested as an additional feature for your tenant. For details, check out ChannelEngine: advanced order management [add-on].
2. From the sidebar, click Orders, Routing. Then, click Add.
3. In the Add: Order routing dialog box, enter information in the following fields:
   • Name - the order routing’s name, e.g.: ‘Bol routing’.
   • Select channels - click the dropdown box to select the channel that applies to this routing, e.g: Bol.com Plaza NL. Note that you can only select a channel that is not already active in other routings.
   • Select stock locations - select the stock location that you want to use, e.g.: ZEOS Netherlands Stock Location. 
     • Only select one location. 
     • Only select the ZEOS stock location whose country corresponds to the country in which orders are placed on the selected channel, e.g.: a Belgian ZEOS stock location for the Bol BE channel.

4. The Prioritize multiple shipping multiple items from one stock location setting has no bearing on the ZEOS order routing rules. It is acceptable to leave the setting disabled.
5. Click Add.

Carrier mapping

After you set up the order routing from a given channel to a ZEOS stock location, you must complete the carrier mapping on that channel according to the table in the section Supported carriers.

Stock

In the Stock step of the relevant channels, set up your stock buffers and limits as desired. 

However, if you connect to a channel that only accepts one stock value, i.e.: does not support receiving multiple inventory levels from ChannelEngine, such as Decathlon, you are required to set up the Location-level limitations in Stock, Stock setup of that channel. Set all of the stock values of all of your stock locations to zero ('0') except for your single ZEOS stock location. To determine which channels accept multiple stock values, check out ChannelEngine: what channel supports what features?, and look for the supported feature "multiple stock locations".

Additional information

Order acknowledgment

Do not acknowledge orders that contain lines that a ZEOS Fulfillment warehouse should fulfill. For guidance, check out Merchant API: order line fulfillment via multiple systems.

Shipments and returns

When ZEOS confirms an order from one of your connected marketplaces, ChannelEngine automatically matches your order to the correct carrier in the country to which the order is destined to be shipped. Then, ChannelEngine creates the shipment with the correct:

• Shipment method
• Track-and-trace code

Shipping labels, return labels, and return tracking codes are managed outside of ChannelEngine.

Supported carriers

ZEOS works with a defined list of carriers. The table below lists the carriers that are available per country.

Shipment carriers per country