Partial Shipment | Glossary - ConvertCart

When a customer purchases goods from us but all the items of the order are not shipped at one time. They are shipped in parts and the customer receives his/her order in fragments. This is known as partial shipment. Partial shipment is needed when one of the items from the order is in backorder or delivery of some item is delayed at a warehouse. We also use partial shipment when items are available at different warehouses.

Merchants may use the partial shipment method in the sales period or at the time of festivals when there is high demand which is not met by the inventory. For example, you are a t-shirt manufacturer and you receive an order of 2000 t-shirts. At the time of delivery, you find out that only 1700 t-shirts are available in your warehouse. You cannot make the complete delivery in one time, so what option you can choose is partial shipment. You can ship the 1700 t-shirts and ask the customer for some time to deliver the rest of the t-shirts. As soon as your stock is ready, you can make the rest of the shipment. 

IMPORTANCE OF PARTIAL SHIPMENT

Partial shipment helps in creating a better customer experience and helps in retaining customers. Consider the example given above, if the manufacturer had not made a partial shipment then he would lose the complete order. This in turn will not only make the merchant lose the present order but a disappointed customer will not place an order in the future too. 

The partial shipment also helps in faster delivery. If items from a particular order are available at different warehouses, then we can ship them from the respective warehouses. It would take longer to first collect all the items in one place and then make a collective shipment. 

If we ship an order at once and it is delayed because of any unforeseen events, then the whole delivery will be late. Instead, partial shipment is a better option because it will satisfy the customer to some extent if he/she receives a few items from the order. 

Above all, it is very important to bring to the notice of the customer that you may do partial shipment, and then it is the customer’s call whether to place the order or not.

HOW TO MANAGE PARTIAL SHIPMENTS

It is very difficult to manage partial shipment manually. The best way to oversee partial shipment is to automate it using technical tools. The tools help in splitting the order under different heads and track each of them as an individual item.

With the help of this, you also know which item is from which particular order. Once all items are shipped, you can mark the order as finished. You can also use integration platforms which will help to reflect the shipment status of each item on your website too.