What would make dropshipping easier for you?
Dropshipping has become popular, because it allows businesses to focus on sales and marketing, and outside the fulfillment of orders to a third party. In fact, many third-party fulfillment centers will private label the shipment with the business’ return information. One of the main advantages of dropshipping is that businesses do not need to incur the cost of inventory up-front.
For example, an author selling an on-demand book on Amazon does not need to order hundreds of copies of their book in advance. Instead, books are printed and shipped as they are ordered. This is economical for the author, and it is also more environmental!
As a dropshipping business, you have a trade-off between the convenience of having a third-party fulfill your orders and the cost of profit sharing. An additional, and rarely discussed, cost of dropshipping the expense of hand-entering data into multiple systems.
The more moving pieces your business has, the higher the chances that the systems will not communicate with each other.
Between getting an order into QuickBooks, fulfilling it, shipping it, and adjusting the inventory, there is a lot to manage for a business of any size. You’re probably wondering, “How can I get all the systems to talk to each other and keep my business running?” Let’s explore dropshipping with and without automation.
Dropshipping without automation
Connex’s CEO, Joe Anderson, frequently tells the story of how he purchased his desk. His story illustrates the benefits of dropshipping for a merchant, but also the short-comings of lacking automation.
About 5 years ago, Joe decided to purchase a desk for his office from a local furniture story. The desk that Joe selected was not in stock, and in fact it was built on demand by a third-party manufacturer in Ohio. In order to place Joe’s order, the furniture store created a sales order. Then, they created a purchase order, sent it over to the manufacturer in Ohio, and Joe paid a 10% deposit. When he got his desk 3 months later, the store sent Joe an invoice and he paid the remaining 90%, which closed out the sales order.
Although the desk meets and even exceeds Joe’s expectations, Joe noticed that the furniture store had no automated system. Everything was done by pen and paper. Joe couldn’t help wondering if implementing automation would have saved the furniture store time and money (and possibly expedite the manufacturing and shipping of his desk).
While a local furniture store may not get many orders, an ecommerce business can scale quickly. As the number of orders grow, so does the complexity of managing all those orders. Entering information by hand is not a sustainable workflow for a growing business.
Instead, let’s look at how you can add automation to the workflow of dropshipping.
Automating dropshipping
If you’re looking to automate data entry to simplify dropshipping, you need a tools such as Connex that will bridge the communication between your different systems.
Where does Connex fit into the picture of automating dropshipping?
Here is how Connex bridges the gap between the different parts of dropshipping:
- A sales order is entered into QuickBooks (eg. you place an order for a piece of furniture)
- Connex automatically syncs the order to a shipping platform such as ShipStation
- When the order ships, Connex syncs the shipping information automatically to QuickBooks
Answers to commonly asked question:
Question #1: How do I create a sales order before an order ships, then an invoice after the order ships?
Closing sales orders is out of the box functionality. The solution is to sync orders twice; once before they ship and once after they ship. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
Question #2: If the invoice is created at a later date, will Connex close the sales order?
Yes, Connex will close sales orders regardless of when the invoice is created. Connex copies the sales order to make an invoice. Connex will associate the payment made with the sales order to the invoice, so it has a $0 balance. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
Question #3: Can I just create sales orders and invoices without payments?
If the order is unpaid, Connex should create no payment. If you want to mark certain orders as unpaid, click here for step-by-step instructions.
Next steps:
It’s tough to stay on top of every orders, especially as your business grows. The more you have to do manually, the longer it will take to fulfill orders and the higher the chances of unhappy customers. You have invested so much already in building your business that upsetting your customers is the last thing you want!
When you automate parts of your workflow, you reduce the chances of human error. You save time, and you no longer have to pay someone to manually enter data for you.
With automation you have peace of mind that different parts of your business are talking to each other, your business continues to run and your customers are happy.
Is Connex the Right Fit for you to Automate DropShipping to QuickBooks?
- Full functionality, including advanced features such as the summary sales tool, for 14 days.
- Sync up to 500 sales to QuickBooks Desktop or Online.
- Complimentary support during your free trial
Are you unsure whether Connex is right for your business?
Click here to schedule a 30-minute call with a member of our sales team.
Why Our Customers Choose Us
Developed specifically for e-commerce business owners
- Scale your business by automating syncing sales & inventory from multiple e-commerce platforms to QuickBooks Desktop or Online.
- Save resources by not wasting time manually entering sales, inventory, and customers into your website and QuickBooks accounts.
- Recommended by Intuit itself, Connex is a trusted name in the automation field.
- If you sell on multiple channels, you can simplify your workflow by using our solution instead of multiple tools.
- Connex integrates QuickBooks with all major e-commerce platforms
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