Tradebox is able to mark orders as despatched for any channel we have an API connection with (Amazon, BigCommerce, eBay, EKM, Magento 1, Shopify, Woocommerce).

It’s not possible to use Tradebox to mark as despatched orders for any marketplace we process via file import (including Magento 2) or for Amazon FBA, and orders through these channels won’t appear in the Shipping screen.

To mark as despatched for Amazon channels, you’ll first need to set your defaults for Carrier Codes. If you choose Other, you’ll also need to set your Carrier Names. You’ll be prompted for these during the new channel wizard, or you can amend them on an existing channel in the Details tab of your Amazon sales channel.

Marking as despatched is a process that involves two-way communication between the marketplace and Tradebox. It’s also a duplication of a function that you could complete yourself in the marketplace; you might run into issues if you attempt to mark an order as despatched via the marketplace and then try to despatch that same order via Tradebox, so we recommend you either despatch all orders yourself via the marketplace or despatch all orders via the Tradebox interface.

Despatch or Dispatch? In short, it doesn't make a difference. They're synonyms, though Despatch has fallen out of use outside of the UK. We use Despatch and Despatched as this is what most of the marketplaces we integrate with use, but if yours uses Dispatch/Dispatched, it'll work exactly the same.

Which orders are valid for despatch?

If the order is paid-but-not-shipped on the marketplace, Tradebox will by default assign it a Paid status after downloading the order. Only orders with a Tradebox status of Paid appear in the Shipping screen. See Order Status Mapping for a full guide to statuses. If the order has a Query status, it is not valid for despatch. You’ll need to action the query first at which point the status should default back to Paid to make it valid for despatch.

The Orders To Despatch counter at the top of the Orders screen shows how many orders you have across all marketplaces that have a Paid status. You can click the Orders To Despatch counter and the grid will automatically show you all Paid orders for all channels.

If you change status of any order to Complete, Tradebox assumes the order has been despatched, so it won’t appear in the Shipping screen.

If you’ve already marked an order as shipped yourself on the marketplace, change the TB order status to Complete within the Orders screen to remove it from the Orders To Despatch counter and the Shipping screen. Don’t to mark as despatched via Tradebox as this will still send a despatch request to the marketplace which may impact your time-to-ship performance.

How to mark as despatched

Overview: Go to the Shipping screen where you'll see any Paid orders. Use the Marketplace dropdown in the top left to switch between viewing orders for Amazon or for all other marketplaces. Tick the box on the left of the screen for any relevant orders and click Despatch. The despatch call isn't sent instantly, but next time the Data Service gets to the despatch part of its cycle for that sales channel, it'll make a call to the marketplace to despatch those orders and the status in Tradebox will change to Despatched.

In the Shipping screen, by default you’ll see any orders from the last 7 days that are valid for despatch. You can view older orders by changing the filter at the top of the screen; be aware that some marketplaces will penalise sellers for taking too long to ship.

The Shipping screen has two views: Amazon Only, and All Channels (Exluding Amazon). This is because Amazon requires a number of additional fields that other marketplaces do not. Toggle between the two views by choosing from the Marketplace dropdown in the upper left.

The Shipping Method is populated with the method provided by the marketplace at the point of download. Normally this will have been set by the seller or been chosen by the customer. The dropdown in this column allows you to select a different shipping method, whatever's shown in this screen will be sent to the marketplace as part of the despatch call. If you know the first characters of your desired method, you can look-ahead type in the methods list to find it more easily.

To mark for despatch, select one or more orders via the tickbox on the left and click Despatch. The tickbox in the grid heading next to the Date label selects all.

The order(s) will disappear from the Shipping screen and the Tradebox order status will automatically change to Scheduled For Despatch. If you're using Tradebox as your stock control method, at this point the products on the order will adjust out.

Once you see Scheduled For Despatch, your work with the order is done and the Tradebox Data Service takes over. When the service next reaches the point in its loop of checking for despatch orders, so long as the channel is Active it will make a call to let the marketplace know which orders to mark as despatched. When the despatch call is made, you'll see it in the Logs and any problems will appear in the Issues tab; if this happens the status will remain Scheduled For Despatch and the service will retry on subsequent attempts. If the call is made successfully, the order status will update to Despatched within Tradebox.

Tracking numbers

If you key in a tracking number for an order in the Shipping screen, this will also be passed to the marketplace (for eBay, Amazon or BigCommerce orders) when the order is despatched.

Tracking numbers are not passed to Shopify, where adding a tracking number and fulfilling an order are two separate processes. EKM, Magento and Woocommerce do not offer tracking numbers without custom development or additional plugins, so a tracking number is not passed to these marketplaces.

You can import tracking numbers in bulk by clicking Import Tracking Numbers at the top of the screen. The import expects a CSV file with two columns, the Tradebox Order Number (this is not the marketplace order number, which is not guaranteed to be unique if you have multiple sales channels. The Tradebox order number shows in the No column in the Shipping screen) and the tracking number. The file can be presented with or without column headers, tick or untick the box on the import screen as appropriate.

How soon will I see the marketplace update?

How long a service loop takes varies a lot from user to user based on number of channels and volume of orders, so there might be very little time between you marking as despatched and the data service talking to the marketplace, or there might be a substantial delay before the service can start despatching.

Once the data service reaches the despatch part of its loop for a channel, it'll act on any orders that have a Scheduled For Despatch status as follows:

• For eBay, BigCommerce and Magento, Tradebox makes an API call to mark the order as shipped/despatched. These marketplaces mark as despatched order by order, so you should be able to see the effects fairly quickly.
• For Amazon, Tradebox creates an XML file (ordershippingfeed.xml) in your Data Folder which is automatically sent to Amazon's system on the next service loop. From there it's read by Amazon’s system. As this contains all relevant order information in one file, you may notice a delay while the file is created in which the service does not appear to be active. Once the file is created and pushed to Amazon, their guidelines state it may take up to 2 hours to be processed.
• EKM’s API only gives the option to change status of the order, which Tradebox changes to despatched. This is done order by order, so you should be able to see it happen fairly quickly. Any other processes normally triggered by changing a status to despatched via EKM's user interface (e.g. sending a confirmation email to the customer) will not be triggered by Tradebox marking as despatched via the EKM API.
• For Shopify, Tradebox creates a Fulfilment JSON file which is automatically uploaded to, and read by Shopify. You should see the fulfilment status change on Shopify fairly quickly after the data service passes the fulfilment request.
• For Woocommerce, Tradebox changes the order status via API to Completed. You should see the order status change on Woocommerce fairly quickly after the data service passes that request.

Troubleshooting

Orders scheduled for despatch will automatically change status to Despatched once the Tradebox Service has completed its loop and made the call to the marketplace. If you encounter orders being stuck with a status of Scheduled For Despatch, check the following:

• In Logs you can see the operation the service is currently working on. Make sure you wait until it's completed at least one full loop of operations.
• In Configuration > User List, make sure the user TBSUPPORT is not logged in. If it is, remove it from the user list.
• In the Channels screen make sure the relevant channel is Active. Deactivated channels are ignored by the service and won’t despatch.
  • If you don’t want to currently download orders or upload stock levels but do want to mark orders as despatched, in the Channels screen use the Action button to first Activate the channel, then again to Turn Download Off.
• Make sure the Data Service is running. Check the Logs screen; if the service is running you should see an entry in the process log at least once every 20 minutes. If your service isn't running, in the first instance you should close Tradebox One, cancel the backup prompt, then reopen.
• For an Amazon channel, if orders aren't marking as despatched, make sure you've set your carrier defaults. In the Details tab of your Amazon channel, check that you've chosen something in each of the three dropdown boxes for Carrier Codes. If you choose Other in any of those, check you've also chosen something in the Carrier Names dropdown.