Dropshipping in Odoo is a retail fulfillment method where a store doesn’t keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, when you sell a product, you purchase the item from a third party and have it shipped directly to the customer. One of the primary advantages of dropshipping is that it requires minimal upfront investment compared to traditional retail models. You don’t have to purchase inventory in bulk or manage a warehouse. Since you don’t have to deal with inventory, warehouse costs, or fulfillment infrastructure, your overhead costs are significantly lower. This makes it an attractive option for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Without the operational hassles of inventory management and order fulfillment, you can concentrate more on marketing strategies, customer acquisition, and building relationships.

In this blog, we are going to see how to activate and manage the Dropshipping facility provided in the Odoo 17 ERP system with the help of the Purchase Application.

Purchase Module => Configuration Menu => Settings => Logistics Section => Dropshipping => Save

Now the feature of Dropshipping is activated. We also need to define the route of Dropshipping in the Odoo System. For that, let us go to ‘Routes’ which is available in the ‘Inventory’ module.

Inventory Application => Configuration Menu => Routes

In the Routes, we can specify the Dropship Route by entering the Route name, Company, Product Categories, Products, Packaging, Shipping methods, Warehouses, Sales Order Lines, the Rules with Action to be done, Source Location, and Destination Location.

Here, we have activated the ‘Products’ option which means that we can use a Dropshipping facility for individual products. We can specify the product that can be drop shipped by going to the product form in the Odoo 17 Purchase Application.

Purchase Module => Products Menu => Products => Select the Product to Dropship

In the Product form, we can activate the ‘Dropship’ option in the ‘Routes’ field under the ‘Operations’ section of the ‘Inventory’ tab.

As we have specified the product to be drop shipped, let us be aware of who is going to dropship this product to the customer location. The Supplier or Vendor needs to dropship the product to the customer. So, it is also important that we need to specify the vendor who is going to dropship in the ‘Purchase’ tab of the product form.

After making the changes, ‘Save’ it. We can now create a Sales Order to see the working of the Dropshipping facility in Odoo 17.

Sales Application => Orders Menu => Orders => New

In the Sales order form, we can select a customer and add the product in which its route has been defined as Dropship and ‘Confirm’ the order. A purchase order will be created to purchase the product from the vendor. In this case, the vendor will supply the product directly to the customer.

In the Purchase Order created, the supplier specified in the product form of ‘Cable Management Box’ is automatically selected and all other details are entered. We can access smart buttons such as ‘Dropship’ and ‘Sales Order’ from the top-right part of the purchase order. Select the ‘Dropship’ smart button to validate the delivered quantities by the supplier.

In the Dropship form, the vendor who is the contact, source location, destination location, scheduled date, deadline, source location, and the product along with its quantity is updated. After ‘Validating’ the delivered quantity of the product, the stage of the Dropship form is changed from ‘Ready’ to ‘Done’.

Now, the product has been delivered to the customer location. When you return to the sales order, you may observe that the value in the ‘Delivered’ column of the ‘Order Lines’ tab is changed from ‘0’ to the number of quantities delivered to the customer which is ‘1’ here.

On selecting the ‘Invoices’ smart button from the sales order, we can create an invoice and register payment for the sale of the product.

This is how Odoo 17 enables businesses to drop ship products directly to customers without any delays in its operational procedures.

Starting a dropshipping business is relatively straightforward. You can set up an online store quickly, and there are various platforms and tools available to facilitate the process. If you are planning to start one, Infinor Solutions is here to help you with one of the best Odoo ERP solutions.