TrackMageIf you run a bookstore, for instance, there are two ways your customers can make a purchase:
A single purchase
Wholesale (bulk) order
A customer that makes a single purchase is only looking to buy just one book at a time. On the other hand, a wholesale customer buys several books at a go, most likely with the intention of reselling them.
Here's an illustration that will help you have a better grasp of the concept of a single and wholesale order.
The success of your business will largely depend on how you handle both customers.
They will both expect, among many other things, a seamless, smooth purchasing experience.
In fact, a wholesale buyer will expect more from you, simply because s/he has more at stake than a single buyer. The satisfaction of your wholesale customers should always be your uttermost priority.
Of course, this is not to say that you should neglect your customers that make single purchases. But you just have to get your priorities right. After all, your business requires cash flow to stay afloat - as such it makes sense to give more attention to your top source of cash inflow.
To this end, we will be digging a bit deeper into wholesale ordering.
Wholesale Ordering
Wholesale ordering is used to refer to a business-to-business transaction that occurs between two entities: a buyer and a seller. Here, the seller supplies goods in large quantities to a buyer (also a merchant), who then resells the goods to consumers in retail quantities.
In other words, a wholesale order is an order from just one customer containing many goods with different SKUs. The goods, upon arrival, are resold to consumers looking to buy in small, one-off quantities.
To experience a memorable working partnership with your wholesale buyers, you must have a system in place that makes it easy for them to track their orders.
Why is this important?
First off, in business time is everything. If a wholesale buyer can't get his goods promptly, his/her business will suffer - so also will yours. But with an efficient tracking system, they will know exactly when their order will arrive. In the event there's a delay, they will know exactly where the problem is coming from, and so will know the steps to take to fix it.
Second, an efficient tracking system means lesser chances of over or under-stocking problems on the part of the wholesale buyer. And the reason is simple: if you know exactly when your goods will arrive, it's easy to predict when they would be sold off. As such, you will know exactly when to place an order and also the right quantity to order.
Thankfully, TracMage has an efficient tracking system that your wholesale customer will find helpful. In the next tutorial, you will get to learn how to set up a tracking page for a wholesale order.
But first, let's explore the different levels of order grouping in TrackMage.
Levels of Order Grouping in TrackMage
In TrackMage, there are three levels of order grouping, namely:
1. Single Parcel in an Order
This is the most common. In this case, a customer makes just one order which contains only one parcel. Here's an example.
2. Wholesale order without grouping
In this case, a customer places an order which contains multiple parcels. However, the parcels aren't grouped by any criteria. Below is a screenshot of a wholesale order without any grouping criteria.
As you can see, all the parcels are displayed on the page at once.
3. Wholesale order with grouping
This is similar to what we have in #2, only this time the parcels are grouped using a criterion. For example, let's say a customer purchased 200 items in two batches. Each batch contains 100 items and has a unique order ID. Here's what the tracking page will look like.
All parcels will be on a single page, still, but not all at once. Only those grouped by a particular criterion will be displayed. For instance, if you clicked on order ID 234567550 as we have in the screenshot above, only the parcels contained in that order will be displayed.
The criterion must not be Order ID; it could be Carrier, Destination, SKU, etc. The idea behind grouping is to make it easy for a wholesale customer to sort through a bulk order.
That said, please follow this tutorial to learn how to set up a tracking page for a wholesale order.