ChannelEngine: why is my marketplace-fulfilled order not visible yet?

About this article

This article lists some of the reasons why marketplace-fulfilled orders fail to appear in your overview at times.

Table of contents

Introduction
Order flows
Regular order flow (fulfilled by the merchant)
Regular order flow (fulfilled by the marketplace)
Pending fulfillment order flow (fulfilled by the marketplace)
Temporary orders

Introduction

Certain marketplaces, such as Amazon, bol, and Cdiscount, offer the option to fulfill orders on your behalf. While that takes away most of the hassle about fulfilling orders, it does affect how orders are processed.

The flow of fetching orders from the marketplace and when they are available on ChannelEngine differs depending on the scenario. Each individual scenario is explained below, but note that marketplace-fulfilled orders appears later on ChannelEngine than merchant-fulfilled orders. For example, Amazon does not have fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) orders available for import until the first shipment is exported. Especially around busy sales periods and weekends, there is also a delay between when an order is placed and when it becomes available on ChannelEngine.

Order flows

Regular order flow (fulfilled by the merchant)

With a regular order (fulfilled by the merchant) the flow for getting an order is something like below:

1. [12:39 - Thursday 9 March] An order is placed on the marketplace by a buyer.
2. [12:45 - Thursday 9 March] The  payment is processed by the marketplace, and the order becomes available via their API.
3. [12:50 - Thursday 9 March] The order is fetched by, and becomes available on, ChannelEngine (web interface, API, etc.).
4. [13:01 - Thursday 9 March] The order is fetched and acknowledged by the merchant's system, and the merchant fulfillment flow starts.

As you can see by this example, there is not a lot of time between the placement of the order by the customer and the order becoming available in the merchant's system.

Regular order flow (fulfilled by the marketplace)

However, if the order is fulfilled by the marketplace the flow for getting order information is different. That is because shipment information is also required, as it needs to be marked as 'shipped' on creation.

1. [12:39 - Thursday 9 March] Order is placed on the marketplace by the customer.
2. [12:45 - Thursday 9 March] Payment is processed by the marketplace, the order is forwarded to the internal fulfillment.
3. [17:50 - Thursday 9 March] Order is picked and ready for shipping.
4. [00:10 - Friday 10 March] Shipment is picked up by the carrier and goes to the internal sorting process.
5. [09:23 - Friday 10 March] The tracking code is available, the order is marked as shipped, and the shipment is available via the marketplace's API.
6. [09:33 - Friday 10 March] ChannelEngine fetches the shipment and order information, and creates the order on ChannelEngine.
7. [09:50 - Friday 10 March] The order is fetched by the merchant's system for reporting purposes, as there is no more fulfillment needed.

However, as shown in the above scenario, the complete order was shipped in one shipment. There are, however, cases where an order contains multiple order lines, which are shipped in separate shipments at different times. This causes orders to be created with incomplete information, such as missing order lines – although in some scenarios ChannelEngine tries to merge them automatically. For reporting purposes, incorrect order line totals could create problems. Therefore, ChannelEngine also offers the option to create temporary or 'pending fulfillment' orders.

Pending fulfillment order flow (fulfilled by the marketplace)

These orders basically follow the same flow as above, however, they are held for a longer period of time before becoming available on ChannelEngine:

1. [12:39 - Thursday 9 March] An order is placed on the marketplace by a buyer.
2. [12:45 - Thursday 9 March] The payment is processed by the marketplace, the order is forwarded to the internal fulfillment.
3. [17:50 - Thursday 9 March] The first part of the order is picked up and prepared for shipping.
4. [00:10 - Friday 10 March] The shipment is picked up by the carrier and goes to the internal sorting process.
5. [09:23 - Friday 10 March] The tracking code becomes available, the order is partially marked as shipped, and the shipment is now available via the marketplace's API.
6. [09:33 - Friday 10 March] ChannelEngine fetches the first shipment and order information, and creates a temporary order which is not visible on ChannelEngine.
7. [18:40 - Friday 10 March] The second part of the order is picked up and prepared for shipping.
8. [00:10 - Saturday 11 March] The shipment is picked up by the carrier, and goes to the internal sorting process.
9. [07:43 - Monday 13 March] The tracking code becomes available, the order is fully marked as shipped, and the shipment is now available via the marketplace's API.
10. [07:55 - Monday 13 March] ChannelEngine fetches the second shipment and order information, and creates a temporary order which is not visible on ChannelEngine.
11. [09:33 - Friday 17 March] There were no new shipments retrieved from the marketplace and the pending fulfillment period is passed. Therefore, a real order is created on ChannelEngine.
12. [09:50 - Friday 17 March] The order is fetched by the merchant's system for reporting purposes, as there is no more fulfillment needed.

In the above scenario, the order was split up in two separate shipments. Because the pending fulfillment option was enabled, the order was imported completely and correctly on ChannelEngine. However, if this is enabled your reporting needs to take into account that these marketplace-fulfilled orders become available for import after x days.

Enabling temporary orders

If these 'temporary' orders are enabled or not, and for how long they are stored before creating a real order, depends on the following settings:

• These settings can be configured for every plugin that supports marketplace-fulfilled orders.
• These settings are hidden, they can only be changed by ChannelEngine.
• If you want to have this feature enabled or disabled, or want to change the waiting period, please contact your Customer Success Manager or ChannelEngine's Support team.