Quick commerce orders overview
Quick commerce orders, commonly known as Q-Commerce orders, refer to the prompt delivery of essential items in a time span of 10 minutes to 30 minutes. It generally caters to categories such as groceries, stationery, pharmacy, personal hygiene care, office supplies, etc.
How does quick commerce work?
In a typical quick commerce model
You receive a purchase order from the platform on which your products are listed.
Based on the received PO, you send inventory to the platform’s warehouse or dark store.
Once the inventory is inwarded at the platform’s warehouse or dark store, the availability of the products is updated on the platform’s mobile app or website, and the customers can place an order for the same.
Whenever an order is placed on any quick commerce platform, the items are shipped to the customer from the platform's warehouses or dark stores by their own fleet of delivery personnel. This is a hyperlocal delivery, which usually happens within a radius of 5-15 km.
You get Purchase Orders from the platform based on the consumption frequency.
Before you start, make sure you have
Added your fulfilment location from where you want to fulfil a quick commerce order.
Enabled the Eshopbox FC from where you want to fulfil a quick commerce order.
Created your products in Eshopbox, which are listed on the platform.
In this article, you will learn how you can fulfil the received POs and send inventory to the platform’s warehouse or dark stores.
Fulfilling quick commerce orders on Eshopbox
You can fulfil the purchase orders received from quick commerce platforms like Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, and Blinkit on Eshopbox. You can do so from your fulfilment location or using an Eshopbox fulfilment centre.
To do so, you need to
Configuring the delivery location
To start fulfilling your quick commerce POs, you need to set up the delivery location on your Eshopbox workspace. This is the location where you want to send the inventory, i.e. a mother warehouse or a dark store for the quick commerce platform.
This location will be created under My Location without enabling self-fulfilment in your workspace. Learn here how to add a new location.
We recommend you add this location so that you do not need to enter the details manually every time you create an order for this location.
Below is a sample Bigbasket PO highlighting the delivery location that you need to add as My location on your workspace for dispatching the order.
While creating the location, you need to mention the quick commerce platform name in the Location name field when adding a delivery location on your Eshopbox workspace.
Managing products and inventory
Products
While creating the product, you need to make sure that the product SKU on Eshopbox matches that on the platform.
In case the SKU code is different on the platform, you can add this code as an alias in Eshopbox so that you do not need to map the products manually every time you create an order.
Inventory
The platform may require you to share the inventory update before sharing the PO. To do so, you can either
Schedule the inventory report on your workspace to be shared with you at certain intervals.
Creating quick commerce orders
Once you receive a PO from any quick commerce platform, you need to create a B2B order corresponding to it on the Eshopbox workspace. Learn here how to create a B2B order.
You need to enter the PO number mentioned in the quick commerce PO in the Customer order ID field while creating an order in Eshopbox, as shown below
Highlighted below in the image are the fields that you need to pick from the quick commerce PO.
The information extracted from the received PO should be mentioned in a specific format, as shown in the image below, for creating the order on the Eshopbox workspace.
Note: You need to mention either SKU or ESIN while creating the order.
Processing quick commerce orders
Once the quick commerce order is created on your workspace, depending on the fulfilment location selected, it will be processed as a B2B order in Eshopbox. Refer to the below steps for B2B order processing
To process a quick commerce order from your fulfilment location, you need to
Confirm the created order.
Pick the items for which the order was created. You can create multiple picklists for a single order in case of a B2B order.
Once all the items of the order are picked, you need to pack them.
In the case of a B2B order, box-wise packing is done, and a packing slip with a unique Box label for every box is generated, which needs to be pasted on the respective boxes once packed.
Schedule the pickup of the packed order as per the slot booked on the quick commerce platform. To schedule the pickup, you need to upload the Eway bill and invoice on the workspace. We recommend creating the invoice based on the packed quantity.
This is necessary to ensure coordination within the warehouse team for the scheduled pickup at its designated time slot.
Processing a quick commerce order from an Eshopbox fulfilment centre
Once the quick commerce order is created, the Eshopbox team will process the created order.
Once the created order is packed, a mail notification will be sent to you.
You need to schedule the pickup of the packed order as per the slot booked on the quick commerce platform by uploading the Eway bill and invoice.
Tracking quick commerce orders
You can keep track of the order journey for a quick commerce order from order creation to dispatch/ handover on your Eshopbox workspace. Learn here how to search, filter, and track quick commerce orders.
FAQs
Q1. Can I use Eshopbox shipping to ship out my quick commerce orders?
No, Eshopbox shipping is not applicable for shipping out quick commerce orders. To ship quick commerce orders, you need to book a delivery appointment with the quick commerce platform and based on the appointment, you need to schedule the pickup with your courier partner.
Q2. For which quick commerce platforms can I process orders using Eshopbox?
You can use your Eshopbox workspace to fulfil POs received from any quick commerce platform over email like Zepto, Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart, Bigbasket, Dunzo Daily, etc.
Q3. How do I filter the quick commerce orders for specific platforms?
To filter your quick commerce orders based on the platform, you need to follow the below givens steps:
Step 1: Log in to your Eshopbox workspace.
Step 2: Navigate to Orders > All B2B orders. You will be redirected to the All B2B orders page.
Step 3: Click on Filters and select Location (to). You need to select the name of the quick commerce platform from the dropdown, and all the orders fulfilled for that platform will appear.
Q4. Can I process the quick commerce POs received as a B2C order?
In the case of a B2B order, you have the option of creating multiple picklists for a single order, and packing is done box-wise. For each packed box, a packing slip with a unique Box ID is generated, which needs to be pasted on the respective box once packed.
This is not feasible in the case of B2C orders. therefore, it is advised to process quick commerce POs as B2B orders.
Q5. Can I enable Batch level picking for Quick commerce orders?
Eshopbox offers the flexibility to select the batch that you want to use to fulfil quick commerce (B2B orders). You can select the batch from which you want to fulfil the order while creating the order on your workspace. This ensures that only the intended batch of stock is used to fulfil the order at the fulfilment location.