Supplier Management

The supplier portal and dropshipping

Send suppliers a portal link, see what they see, and route dropship orders with three flexible ship options.

Inviting a supplier

Open the supplier record and click Send Portal Invite. ShipWave emails the primary contact a magic-link login to /supplier/[slug]—no password, no shared accounts. The link is good for 30 days and can be revoked at any time. You can also paste the URL directly if the supplier prefers; access is gated by an emailed code on first sign-in. Re-invites overwrite the previous link, so you don't have to chase stale URLs.

What suppliers see

The portal is intentionally minimal. Suppliers land on a dashboard with three tiles: pending fulfillment requests (dropship orders waiting on them), POs to acknowledge (new purchase orders awaiting confirmation), and recent shipments (history). They can drill into each, view item details, scoped SKU mappings, and the customer ship-to address. They cannot see other customers, your costs to other suppliers, or your sales data—every query is scoped to that supplier's ID.

The three ship options

When a supplier opens a pending fulfillment request, they pick one of three ship modes. 1) ShipWave rates: ShipWave queries your carrier accounts (USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, regionals) and the supplier picks a rate—the label bills back to your ShipWave wallet. 2) Supplier's own EasyPost account: the supplier links their EasyPost token once and uses their own contracted rates; you reimburse on the invoice. 3) Mark-shipped with their own carrier: the supplier types a tracking number from any carrier they already use (FedEx Ground account, freight broker, etc.). All three options produce the same downstream result—a tracked shipment in ShipWave.

Tracking writeback

The moment a supplier creates a label or pastes a tracking number, ShipWave writes that tracking back to the originating channel. For Shopify orders it calls the fulfillment API with the tracking number, carrier, and line items—the customer gets a Shopify shipping email automatically. For Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Walmart, and TikTok Shop orders, it pushes the tracking through the same channel-specific API used by your in-house shipments. Suppliers never touch your marketplace credentials and can't mark orders shipped in the wrong place.

When the supplier doesn't move

Dropship requests that sit unacknowledged for 24 hours surface on your supplier scorecard and trigger an email reminder. After 48 hours, ShipWave can optionally reassign the order to a fallback supplier (configured in priority order) or back to your own warehouse for in-house fulfillment. Enable reassignment per channel under Admin → Settings → Dropship Routing.

FAQs

Can a supplier print labels in bulk?
Yes. The portal supports batch label generation—suppliers can select multiple pending requests and produce a single ZPL/PDF combined file.
Do suppliers see my customer's email?
They see the ship-to name and address (required to ship) but not the customer's email or phone unless you explicitly grant it in the supplier's contact-visibility settings.
What if a supplier ships with their own carrier and I want a tracking URL?
ShipWave maps the carrier name + tracking number against a public-carrier lookup so customers still get a working tracking page on the storefront. Fallback is a generic "your supplier shipped via [carrier]" message.
Can I require packing slips with my branding for dropship orders?
Yes. Upload a branded packing slip template on the supplier record and the portal renders it automatically for ShipWave-rate and own-EasyPost labels.

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.

  • Supplier delivery formats

    Five ways to deliver orders to a supplier: portal login, CSV email digest, SFTP file drop, signed webhook, or pull API.

  • 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.

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