Orders and shipping from one list, including the part bol.com makes you do twice
Why every channel's open orders land in one list, how a shipment is confirmed back to bol.com, and the one case in which Depotely buys a label for you.
· 3 min read
Selling on three channels means three order screens, three ways to print a label and three places to mark something as shipped. Depotely folds that into one list and one button, and it is careful about the parts of the job that marketplaces make easy to get wrong.
One list, refreshed every twenty minutes
Open orders from bol.com, Amazon, Shopify, WooCommerce, Etsy, BigCommerce and Kaufland are fetched on the same schedule, every twenty minutes, and shown together. That interval is also the window in which a unit sold on one channel is still visible on the others, so Depotely does not stretch it to save a few API calls.
An order's status in the list is a normalised word, not whatever the channel calls it. "Awaiting Fulfillment" on one platform and "open" on another both read as open; "fulfilled" and "shipped" both read as shipped. The raw value is kept for reference, but the list, the stock holds and the filters all work on the normalised one.
A label is not a shipment
This is the detail that catches most bol.com sellers. Printing a label does nothing on bol.com's side: the order stays open until a shipment is confirmed with a transporter and a track-and-trace code, or with the id of a label bought through bol.com. Depotely separates the two deliberately.
- The label step: a bol.com label from the delivery options bol.com offers for that order, or a Sendcloud label with your own carrier contract.
- The ship step: one button that confirms the shipment to bol.com with whatever the order has, marks the items shipped, moves the units through the ledger and pushes the new stock to your other channels.
bol.com processes that confirmation in the background and keeps listing the order as open for a while. Depotely remembers that it confirmed it and keeps the order under shipped for ninety minutes instead of letting it bounce back into your open list. After that, bol.com's answer wins again, so a shipment bol.com rejected does come back to you.
The one time Depotely buys a label on its own
Depotely never buys a bol.com label unless you have switched automatic buying on. Delivery options are fetched for every order, because that is free; the purchase is not, and a seller who ships with their own carrier should never pay for a label they did not ask for.
The single exception is a seller's own choice: an order that bol.com delivers itself, a "Verzenden via bol.com" order, needs a bol.com label by definition. Confirming such an order without a label buys the picked delivery option, or bol.com's recommended one, and confirms with it. The button says so before you press it. It never buys a second label when the order already has one.
Stock moves when the parcel moves
Confirming a shipment is also the moment the units leave your stock for good. Until then they were held for the order, which already kept them away from other channels. The hold and the shipment are keyed on the order item, so an order that is fetched again later replays as a no-op rather than shipping twice.
A cancellation releases the hold. A return that comes back in sellable condition can be restocked with one movement, which brings the units back to every channel in the next push.
Carriers
Sendcloud labels carry the carrier's own tracking number, and Depotely maps the carrier name to bol.com's transporter codes when it confirms the shipment; a carrier bol.com does not know is reported as "other". The parcel is trackable on both sides without anyone retyping a number.
What you actually do
1. Open the order list; everything from every channel is there.
2. Print the label of your choice, or let the "Verzenden via bol.com" order buy its own.
3. Press ship. The marketplace is told, the stock moves, the other channels are updated.
Three steps, once, instead of three steps per channel.