Shopify stores

How Purple Dot supports your WMS/ERP software depends on whether Purple Dot is integrated into your Shopify store as separate checkout or as a payment provider inside Shopify's checkout. See more here to learn about these two options.

As separate checkout

When using Purple Dot in this way, any sold pre-order is held outside your Shopify store until stock arrives.

All WMS/ERP systems are compatible with this version of Purple Dot.

That is just a natural consequence of having 0 un-fulfillable orders inside your Shopify store until stock arrives. 

When stock arrives, Purple Dot will automatically turn the pre-orders it has collected into orders in Shopify, at which point the same fulfillment flow you already run for regular orders will kick in.

If you want to see data about pre-orders ahead of fulfillment, you can look at various Waitlist/Pre-order/Sales reports inside our merchant portal, or use our Private API to access the data programatically.

As payment provider inside Shopify checkout

When using Purple Dot in this way, all sold pre-orders will land in your Shopify store right after purchase. 

However, Purple Dot still ensures that you have 0 un-fulfillable orders inside your downstream systems until stock arrives.

WMS/ERPs already supported

1. Fulfill.io
2. Flexport
3. ShipStation
4. (coming soon) Linnworks

What if my WMS/ERP is not listed above?

When using Purple Dot with Shopify checkout, any sold pre-order lands in your Shopify store right after purchase. Purple Dot does a couple of things to ensure that this does not create problems for fulfilment

• all pre-order line items are automatically assigned to a "Purple Dot Virtual Location" 
• all pre-order line items can be additionally automatically put "On hold"

These actions should indicate to your WMS/ERP that they are not ready for fulfillment.

Here's how a pre-order purchased through Shopify checkout may look. 

In this example, the shopper has purchased the "ACOTAR Tights" on pre-order alongside buying "Huggy Light Compression Tights" that weren't on pre-order and could be fulfilled right away.

Come Dec 9 -15 - when stock arrives for the "ACOTAR Tights" - Purple Dot will automatically

• remove the "On hold"
• re-assign it to one of the real locations in your Shopify store (respecting the same sotck allocation rules as regular orders, although you do have the ability to assign all pre-orders for a particular product to a specific location)

If your WMS/ERP is able to 

• ignore line items in a Shopify order that are either “On hold” or assigned to “Purple Dot Virtual Location” when first ingesting the order, and then
• re-ingest line item(s) from existing orders because "On hold" was removed and the location assignment had changed

then it will be compatible with Purple Dot without any work required!

If your WMS/ERP does not support these Shopify order state changes, Purple Dot will (and can) integrate with it directly.

Other stores

Purple Dot is compatible with any eComm platform that can make use of our Private API. Talk to use at [email protected] to get started!