Supplier Management
Supplier feeds and live inventory
Pull live inventory from suppliers via SFTP, HTTPS, or API. Map fields with drag-and-drop. Drift detection blocks bad data from hitting marketplaces.
Why feeds exist
If you dropship or share inventory with a supplier, you need their live stock count to drive accurate "in stock" status on your storefront and marketplaces. Supplier feeds are an automated pull—ShipWave fetches the supplier's inventory file (or API response) on a schedule, normalizes it, and blends it into the
InventoryLevel table tagged to that supplier. Marketplace pushes read the blended number so an Amazon listing's available count reflects what your supplier can actually ship today.Setting up a feed
Go to Admin → Supplier Feeds → New and select the source supplier. Pick a transport: SFTP (enter host, credentials, file path, polling interval), HTTPS (paste a URL with optional Basic auth or bearer token), or API (configure endpoint, method, and any required headers/body for paginated calls). Set the cron cadence—typical values are every 15 minutes for fast movers, hourly for stable catalogs, or daily for slow-moving lines.
The field-map UI
After the first successful fetch, ShipWave shows you the parsed source columns (or JSON keys, or XML paths) in a drag-and-drop mapping panel. Drag each source field onto its destination: supplierSku, quantityOnHand, unitCost, upc, leadTimeOverride. Built-in parsers handle CSV (including tab-separated and pipe-separated), JSON (with JSONPath support for nested structures), and XML (with XPath). For oddball formats you can add a JavaScript transform step.
Drift detection
Suppliers ship bad feeds. A misconfigured ERP can dump zero counts across an entire catalog; an off-by-one parse can attribute the wrong SKU to the wrong qty. ShipWave's drift detection guards against this. If a feed run reports a >50% drop in total reported stock vs. the prior run, or if more than 25% of SKUs flip from in-stock to zero in a single cycle, the feed is auto-paused and a "needs review" alert fires. The blended inventory keeps the prior values and marketplace pushes continue against the last good snapshot—a bad feed never reaches Amazon or Shopify until you approve it.
The health dashboard
See every feed at a glance at
/admin/supplier-feeds. Each row shows last-run time, last-run row count, status (green/yellow/red), and the next scheduled run. Click into a feed to see run history (per-row counts, parse errors, drift snapshots), retry a failed pull, or test the field map against a sample file. Red feeds are tagged with a one-line diagnostic ("auth failed," "drift threshold tripped," "file path empty") so you know whether to call the supplier or fix a config.How feed data blends into inventory
Feed-reported quantities don't replace your own warehouse counts—they're added to a separate "supplier on-hand" bucket on the InventoryLevel. When ShipWave pushes inventory to marketplaces, the available count is your warehouse on-hand + supplier on-hand (for active, non-stale feeds), capped by any per-channel buffer you've set. If a feed goes stale (no successful run in 6 hours by default), its contribution drops to zero so you don't oversell on dead data.
FAQs
My supplier only sends a CSV by email. Can that drive a feed?
Not directly—feeds need a pull endpoint. For email-delivered CSVs use the <a href="/help/supplier-delivery-formats">CSV email</a> delivery format instead; it ingests via the same parser pipeline.
How do I test a field map without going live?
Click "Dry Run" on the feed page. It pulls the source, applies your field map, and shows the resulting InventoryLevel changes side-by-side without committing.
What if drift detection is too sensitive for a volatile supplier?
Adjust the thresholds per-feed: drop %, zero-flip %, and minimum-stale interval. The defaults are safe for most retail catalogs; lower them for highly seasonal suppliers.
Does the feed write supplier prices too?
Optionally. If you map the unitCost field, the supplier's feed-reported price updates the cost history on the SKU map. We do not change your sell prices—feed costs only inform margin reports.
Can a single feed cover multiple suppliers?
No—each feed is scoped to one supplier. If a parent vendor sends one combined file for multiple supplier accounts, split it into per-supplier feeds with a filter rule on the field map.
More in Supplier Management
- Supplier management overview
When to use suppliers vs. warehouses, and how ShipWave models dropship, wholesale, and hybrid fulfillment.
- Adding suppliers and mapping SKUs
Create a supplier record, attach contacts and ship-from addresses, and map your internal SKUs to the supplier's codes and UPCs.
- Purchase orders: manual and auto-PO
Create POs by hand or let the daily auto-PO engine draft them for you based on reorder points, lead times, and sales velocity.
- Receiving purchase orders
How to receive POs in part or in full, how received quantities flow into inventory, and how the receipt audit trail works.
- The supplier portal and dropshipping
Send suppliers a portal link, see what they see, and route dropship orders with three flexible ship options.
- Supplier delivery formats
Five ways to deliver orders to a supplier: portal login, CSV email digest, SFTP file drop, signed webhook, or pull API.