How Does Oberlo Order Fulfilment Work: A Stepwise Guide

Oberlo is one of the leading dropshipping solution providers that helps thousands of online store owners. While using Oberlo to import products from AliExpress is quite simple, users often find it hard to understand its more complex features.

For instance, you might want to know more about the Oberlo order fulfilment process and how to manage it automatically. Read on and get your queries resolved about its order fulfilment process in this detailed guide.

What Is Oberlo & How Does It Work

Oberlo is a popular dropshipping solution provider that you can integrat with your Shopify account. It will help you look for appropriate products to sell in different categories from thousands of sellers worldwide.

The best part about Oberlo is that you can link it with AliExpress. This will let you import products directly from AliExpress. Later, you can customize the presentation of your products via Shopify. Apart from that, Oberlo can also help you track orders and perform other managerial tasks to organize your store’s inventory.

Read More: What Does Awaiting Fulfillment Mean? Everything You Need to Know Here!

Order Fulfilment Process: A Brief Understanding

Before we discuss the Oberlo order fulfilment process, it is important to cover some basics. Ideally, order fulfilment can be a complex process and the exact steps would vary on the model that you are implementing. Nevertheless, the overall process can be broken down into several steps:

Inventory Management

At first, you need to find a way to store and manage the overall inventory of your products. You can do this on your own or get in touch with third-party sellers that can do it in the background.

Warehouse Management

For the self-fulfillment model, warehouse management can be a big hassle. In this, you need to take care of the inventory, what goes in/out, and several other logistics.

Processing of Orders

This is the most important part of the order fulfilment process. Here, you need to process the order made by the customer and match it with the present stock.

Packaging & Shipping

The way you package and ship your products can be a dealbreaker. You need to make sure that the product is not damaged and is in proper condition. You have to take care of the end-to-end processing of the order and can inform your customers about its status as well.

Fulfilling Orders

The process won’t stop with the delivery of products. You can also take measures to handle returns and exchanges of orders. It is recommended to automate this process and set up clear return/refund policies for a transparent experience.

Oberlo Order Fulfilment Process: A Stepwise Breakdown

Ideally, the basic Oberlo order fulfilment process follows the above-listed drill. Since it empowers dropshipping stores, the practical steps might be a bit different. Here’s what happens when a customer places an order on your Oberlo-powered store and how you can fulfil it.

1. Order Received

Firstly, let’s say a customer has placed an order on your Oberlo-powered website/app. As soon as they place an order, you will get a notification by Oberlo. You can go to your account to check the placed order and its details.

2. Order Confirmed

After checking the details of the order on your Oberlo dashboard, you can choose to accept or reject it. Unless there is an exception with the inventory, store owners simply accept the order that intimates its supplier.

Here, you can choose to accept/reject one order at a time or do bulk processing as well. Please note that Oberlo lets us automate this process as well, but some managers choose to perform a manual check beforehand.

3. Customer Notification

The Oberlo order fulfilment process also allows customers to track their purchases. Once you accept the order, the customer will get a notification of the same. If the process is automatic, the customer will get a notification shortly after placing the order.

4. Warehouse Processing

After you accept the order, the supplier will be notified. They will simply take care of the needed logistics to process the order and make sure the right product is matched.

5. Packaging & Tracking

Since Oberlo supports dropshipping, you don’t have to worry about the packaging or shipping of the product. This part of the Oberlo order fulfilment will be taken care of by the original supplier instead.

Though, if you have integrated the AliExpress tracking service, then you can easily intimate your customers about the current status of their package. In this way, your customers can check the state of their order and be informed about its delivery.

6. Order Delivered

Lastly, the order would be delivered by the shipping services to the address provided by the customer. You will also get a notification on Oberlo about the successful delivery of the order.

In case the order won’t be delivered due to any reason, then it will be marked as incomplete on your Oberlo dashboard. You can choose to take the needed action now (like trying for another delivery or canceling the order).

7. Post-delivery Processes

A lot of store owners think that delivering the order is the last phase of the Oberlo order fulfilment process. Well, in some cases, it can be – but there are times when customers can choose to return or exchange the product.

To handle these post-delivery processes, it is highly recommended to have an upfront refund and return policy. You can communicate with the customer and get in touch with the supplier to process these requests. On the other hand, if the customer has opted for a refund, then you can simply ask them to send the package to the designated address and process their payment.

Pro Tip:

To automate the Oberlo order fulfilment processes, I suggest you connecting your AliExpress account with your dashboard. To do this, just go to your Oberlo account > Settings > Supplier and select AliExpress. Just make sure to use the same AliExpress account to configure it with your Oberlo dashboard. Now, you can choose to automate different backend processes by AliExpress.

Common eCommerce Order Fulfilment Methods

Please note that Oberlo follows a dropshipping fulfilment method. Though, if you own an online store, then you must be aware of the three common modes of order fulfilment. This will help you decide which way to go to get better results.

Self-fulfilment

This is also known as an in-house order fulfilment method as it doesn’t involve any third-party source. You would have to manage your store’s inventory and ship products to your customers. To help you manage your orders, you can use dedicated tools, but you have to do all the heavy lifting. While it is more time-consuming, it will also give you freedom to customize things on the go.

Third-party Fulfilment

In this, you simply use third-party services to help you with the order fulfilment process. You can sync your inventory with their warehousing services. They will take care of packaging, shipping, and other logistics while you can focus on marketing your store.

Dropshipping Fulfilment

This is the simplest way to run an online store and fulfil your customer’s orders. You simply manage the front-end services, and the orders are directly processed by the supplier. The supplier will take care of warehousing, shipping, packaging, and other logistics on your behalf.

Explore DSers: Official AliExpress Dropshipping Tool

Since using Oberlo is a bit complicated and expensive, you can consider trying DSers, which is its better alternative. It is the official AliExpress dropshipping tool, which is available for free and is extremely easy to use.

Seamless Integration

Unlike Oberlo which is only available for Shopify, DSers is compatible with all the leading online platforms. Presently, it is compatible with Shopify, WooCommerce, and Wix.

Free & Easy to Use

The basic version of DSers is freely available (unlike Oberlo). Also, the overall interface of DSers is extremely simple that will let you find and import products from thousands of suppliers, listed in different categories.

Supplier Optimizer

To further save time and resources, DSers users can try its Supplier Optimizer feature. Just select any product and DSers will automatically pick the best-rated and most profitable supplier for it.

Automatic Processing

You can automate the overall order fulfilment process with DSers. It offers amazing features like the automatic updating of order statuses and syncing of tracking numbers.

What's More

Besides that, you can access several other managerial features on DSers like variant mapping, automatic pricing, stock management, product division, affiliate marketing, and so much more.

Conclusion

I’m sure that this guide would have helped you understand how does the Oberlo order fulfilment process work. As you can see, there can be different ways to fulfil a customer’s order on Oberlo. You can do everything automatically or can manage orders manually as per your requirements.

Also, if you want to use more advanced dropshipping and store management features, then simply switch to DSers. It is the official AliExpress dropshipping tool that supports multiple platforms and is super easy to use.