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

About this article

This article lists reasons why marketplace-fulfilled orders appear with a delay in your orders overview.

Table of contents

Introduction

Fulfillment by merchant

Fulfillment by the marketplace - full shipments

Fulfillment by marketplace - partial shipments 

Retrieve marketplace-fulfilled orders

Introduction

Marketplaces like Amazon, bol, and Cdiscount can handle order fulfillment, simplifying the fulfillment process but altering the way you manage orders.

Marketplace-fulfilled orders appear later on ChannelEngine than merchant-fulfilled orders. For instance, Amazon’s FBA orders show up only after the first shipment is exported. During busy sales periods and on weekends, there may be additional delays between order placement and the order's availability on ChannelEngine. 

The delay in order availability on ChannelEngine varies per order flow scenario:

• Fulfillment by merchant
• Fulfillment by the marketplace - full shipments
• Fulfillment by marketplace - partial shipments 

Fulfillment by merchant

When the order is fulfilled by the merchant, the merchant receives the order via a workflow that is similar to:

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 its 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.

(Timelines are representative and can deviate from real-life scenarios.)

When the merchant fulfills an order in a single shipment, there is little time between when the customer places the order and when the order becomes available in the merchant's system.

Fulfillment by the marketplace - full shipments

However, if the order is fulfilled by the marketplace, the flow for getting order information into the merchant's order management system changes. That is because ChannelEngine requires the order's shipment information. 

The order is marked as Shipped when it is imported into ChannelEngine: 

1. [12:39 - Thursday 9 March] Order is placed on the marketplace by the customer.
2. [12:45 - Thursday 9 March] Payment is handled by the marketplace, and the order is sent to 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; no more processing is needed.

Fulfillment by the marketplace - partial shipments

There are cases where an order contains multiple order lines, and each line is shipped across separate shipments at different times. 

Partial shipments of the same marketplace-fulfilled order appear as two separate orders 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, and the order is forwarded to 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 marked as partially 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 Order A on ChannelEngine.
7. [09:38 - Friday 10 March] The merchant's system fetches order A for reporting purposes, and no more processing is needed.
8. [18:40 - Friday 10 March] The second part of the order is picked up and prepared for shipping.
9. [00:10 - Saturday 11 March] The carrier picks up the shipment for internal sorting.
10. [07:43 - Monday 13 March] The tracking code on the second shipment becomes available, the order is marked as fully shipped, and the shipment is available via the marketplace's API.
11. [07:55 - Monday 13 March] ChannelEngine fetches the second shipment and order information and creates Order B on ChannelEngine.
12. [08:20 - Monday 13 March] The merchant's system fetches order B for reporting purposes, and no more processing is needed.

Retrieve marketplace-fulfilled orders

Your reporting needs to take into account that marketplace-fulfilled orders may add more fulfilled order lines to the order after you retrieve the initial marketplace-fulfilled order from the API. Therefore, always retrieve your marketplace-fulfilled orders via the Merchant API's /v2/orders/ endpoint with the appropriate filters.