Magento Shipping Extension
The customer is a shipping aggregator who provides shipping services to their B2B customers, who was looking for an agency who can develop a magento shipping extension. They wanted their merchant customers who use Magento to create shipments from Magento admin and print shipping labels.
Magento Shipping Extension Requirements
Compose Packages
Firstly, the customer wanted the extension to allow the business user to select items from the order, select the quantities to ship. A single order may be shipped in a single package or multiple packages depending on the order item value.
Check Rates
Next, the customer wanted shipping rates to be visible only in the Magento Admin area when the fulfilment team composes a package. The rates are fetched from the aggregator API and depend on the weight, length, width and height of the package.
Create Package
In addition, the extension should create packages from Magento Admin using a token authenticated API by passing package weight, length, width and height. The shipment origin is automatically picked from the configuration.
Shipping Label
Fourth, when the shipment is created in the aggregator system, the shipping label is generated by the aggregator and a response is returned. This should be saved in the database in binary PDF format along with tracking numbers
Multisource Inventory
Fifth, the Magento 2 shipping extension should be compatible with the Multi Source Inventory module and should provide capabilities to select the warehouse and release the order item reservation if MSI is enabled.
Partial Shipment
Finally, when a few items are not in the stock, the merchant might want to ship the items to the customer. After the out of stock items are back ordered and delivered to the warehouse, the remaining items should be dispatched.
Features of the Magento Shipping Extension
As we understood the requirements of the merchants and the aggregator, we have delivered a solution that not only fulfils the requirements but also takes into account possible human errors that could occur during shipment creation.
Create partial shipments
The extension enables a merchant to create partial shipment using available items and then ship those items only. Whenever the remaining items arrive in the warehouse, the merchant can create another shipment.
Create Shipment and Label
By providing weight, length, width and height of the package, the shipping aggregator can easily calculate the volumetric weight of the package. These values are picked from the catalogue, so that the merchant does not need to manually enter the values.
Check shipping rates
The extension allows a merchant to see only the available carriers who deliver to the specific shipping address. Along with the available carriers, the merchant can also see the rates offered for each carrier.
MSI Compatible
The extension is compatible with the Multi Source Inventory (MSI) extension shipped with Magento. A large enterprise using this feature can leverage the functionality of the extension while remaining compatible with the requirements of MSI extension.
Main Benefits
Magento shipping extension we developed, allowed a merchant save up to 2 hours a day spent on manual shipping label creation. In addition, the merchant saved reconciliation efforts with the aggregator by eliminating CSV files altogether. In conclusion, the Magento Shipping Extension saved efforts for both merchant and the aggregator.
