Fulfillment and Logistics

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Fulfillment is the logistic process of storing merchandise and receiving, managing, packing and shipping orders. It starts when a shopper buys a product and ends when the life cycle of the order is complete with the shopper receiving the purchase.

This overview article goes over what you can accomplish with VTEX logistics’ capabilities, like the registration and control of your inventory, shipping rates management, items availability control, tracking deliveries, and more.

Importing inventory from an ERP or Back office

If your store has an ERP integration or another integration for inventory management and shipping, it will be necessary to integrate with VTEX platform. The links below provide a general view of the integration flow between a back office system and a VTEX store regarding inventory:

If you wish to customize the fulfillment capabilities in the storefront, see the Checkout guide overview.

Understanding fulfillment process

When a shopper selects an item and proceeds to checkout, after entering their location, the VTEX platform:

Checks the availability of the item and where it will be picked up from.
Selects the place and the time when the carrier must collect the item.
Calculates the shipping conditions, or Service Level Agreement (SLA), that will be offered to the shopper.

The shopper chooses one option from the shipping conditions displayed and completes the order’s payment. That is when the logistic part of packing and shipping takes place.

The following image summarizes the fulfillment process:

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In VTEX, there are specific terms to identify the entities involved in order fulfillment, which can be checked in our Logistics Glossary. An important concept is Shipping strategy, defined as the relationship between the following entities:

Shipping policy: Set of rules that define the shipping conditions, including carrier’s working hours, delivery time frames, shipping rates, and more.
Loading dock: Entity that links your products to a shipping policy.
Warehouse: Location where your products are stored.

The following image shows how these entities connect to each other:

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Setting up shipping strategy (mandatory)

Configuring your shipping strategy means setting up a shipping policy, a loading dock, and a warehouse. For the system to perform as expected, we suggest you follow the order below:

In VTEX Admin: Shipping > Shipping Strategy > Shipping Policies/Loading Docks/Warehouses

1. Shipping policy

A Shipping policy defines the shipping conditions offered to the shopper at checkout, including costs and deadlines. This set of rules includes carriers working hours, shipping capacity, and more.

POST - Create shipping policy

2. Loading dock

Loading docks connect the warehouse to the shipping policy. The loading dock corresponds to a physical location from where products will be shipped. By default, when you create a new loading dock, it is generated as activated.

3. Warehouse

A Warehouse is the physical location where you store your products. The items sold go from the warehouse to the loading dock for the carriers to deliver them. By default, when you create a new warehouse, it is generated as activated.

Managing shipping strategy

Manage your Shipping strategy by editing your shipping policies, loading docks, and warehouses.

In VTEX Admin: Shipping > Shipping Strategy > Shipping Policies/Loading Docks/Warehouses

Shipping policy

You can list shipping policies, deactivate, reactivate, update or delete them.

Loading dock

You can list loading docks, deactivate, reactivate, update or delete them.

Warehouse

You can list warehouses, deactivate, reactivate, update or delete them.

Managing inventory

Once you have your Shipping strategy set up, you will need to manage the items available for sales, which compose your inventory. In VTEX, inventory is the relationship between your stored products and their availability for sales.

Inventory

You can update your inventory or retrieve information about it.

In VTEX Admin: Catalog > Inventory > Inventory Management

Setting up shipping configurations (Optional)

VTEX offers different solutions for your logistic process according to your business needs. You can configure shipping geolocations, work with the reservation, create scheduled delivery windows, define holidays, register pickup points, and more.

In VTEX Admin: Store Settings > Shipping > Settings/Geolocation Shipping/Holidays

Geolocation shipping (polygons)

Geolocation shipping is the registration of shipping locations using polygons to delimitate areas, usually for delivering in rural and industrial areas.

Reservations

Reservation is the solution that prevents the same item from being sold more than once. After the shopper completes the purchase, the status of the purchased item changes from Available to Reserved in the inventory management.

Scheduled delivery

Scheduled delivery allows you to set delivery time frames for shoppers to choose the day and time to receive the order.

Holidays

The Holidays feature allows you to configure days that should not be considered valid for delivery, so that the VTEX platform adds those days when calculating the shipping estimated time.

Pickup points

Pickup points are physical locations from where shoppers can pick up their orders.

In VTEX Admin: Shipping > Pickup Points

Calculating shipping estimate time

When the shopper enters their address at checkout, the VTEX platform analyzes the order fulfillment conditions and displays the available shipping options to the shopper.

SLA

Service Level Agreement (SLA) refers to the order’s fulfillment conditions presented to the shopper, including shipping type - delivery or pick up -, costs and deadlines.

POST - Calculate SLA

Optimizing fulfillment process with carriers

Carriers, or couriers, are the companies responsible for delivering orders, and their operating profiles are configured in your shipping policies. The service contract details with carriers, like shipping ZIP code ranges and packages weight limits, are configured via shipping rate template.

Freight values

Create carriers’ freight values and retrieve information about them.

VTEX Shipping Network (independent App)

VTEX Shipping Network is an app that connects your store with carriers to deliver orders at better freight costs and with optimized logistic operation. Currently, the solution is available exclusively in Brazil.

With VTEX Shipping Network you coordinate the actions of:

Notifying carriers of new package deliveries.
Issuing shipping labels.
Tracking the shipping process steps until the order is fulfilled.

Notification

The endpoint below notifies the carrier of the dispatched package information, including fiscal information, and a contact email.

POST - Notify Carrier with App

Tracking

The endpoint below updates tracking events for pending deliveries using a list of tracking codes.

POST - Tracking Events with App

VTEX Tracking (independent App)

VTEX Tracking is an app that enables the merchant to control and manage deliveries in real-time, having visibility of indicators like the driver's location and order delivery status. Shoppers can also keep up with deliveries in real-time. Currently, the solution is available exclusively in Brazil.

We strongly recommend that a call to a VTEX Tracking GET endpoint is made only once every 6 hours. Retrieving data from the same endpoint more than once during a 6-hour window represents a load to our API that will slow down the overall usage of systems.