Dropship: Expand Assortment Without Inventory Risk

Q: Can we expand assortment without holding inventory?

Yes. Add vendor-sourced SKUs that ship directly from the vendor to the end customer, with zero upfront inventory investment, while orders flow through the same OMS that handles your owned-inventory orders.

Q: How does vendor onboarding work?

You send an invitation, and the vendor completes a guided four-step process in the Vendor Portal: corporate information, users, business verification documents, and integration setup. You review documents in-app, map items, and activate the vendor. Vendors can configure locations while review is still in progress.

Q: Does KIBO provide a portal for dropship vendors?

Yes. In the Vendor Portal, suppliers onboard themselves, configure fulfillment locations (hours, cut-offs, capacity), and process routed orders: acknowledgements, packing slips, tracking, and invoices. Every order is traceable from both sides via a shared PO/shipment number.

Q: How are orders routed to dropship vendors?

Vendor locations participate in the same routing engine as owned warehouses and stores, evaluated on proximity, stock, hours, cut-offs, capacity, and routing attributes. One routing strategy covers owned and third-party inventory, with consistent availability and delivery promises.

Q: Can we control vendor pricing and margins?

Yes. Item mapping ties your catalog UPCs to each vendor’s SKUs with a contracted cost price. Vendor-facing orders and invoices reflect negotiated cost, never the storefront price, and invoices generate automatically.

Q: Can vendors ship on our carrier accounts?

Yes. Vendors either enter their own tracking numbers or generate labels in the portal on your negotiated carrier accounts, with your branding, carrier and service pre-selected from the checkout shipping method, and automatic tracking capture.

Q: Can we protect the customer promise from vendor overcommitment?

Yes. Per-location capacity limits, processing times, hours, and cut-offs (with holiday overrides) feed routing and delivery dates. A location at capacity is simply skipped, and SLA indicators flag every order as On Time, At Risk, or Overdue.

Q: How do we monitor vendor performance?

Vendor Analytics scores every vendor on item acceptance, on-time shipment, and return rate, rolled into a 0–10 Performance Score with High/Medium/Low categories, plus an immutable activity log on every order.

Your Supplier Inventory Sits Halfway Across the World in Someone Else’s Warehouse?

Your customers don’t care. They want the same consistent experience.

Your Supplier Inventory Sits Halfway Across the World in Someone Else’s Warehouse?

Your customers don’t care. They want the same consistent experience.

Contact Sales

One Routing Engine Finds the Best Source for Every Order, Your DC or a Vendor’s

A separate dropship system means lag, reconciliation errors, and a second set of rules to maintain.

KIBO Dropship runs on the same routing engine as the rest of the platform, so vendor locations are evaluated alongside every warehouse and store by proximity, cost, capacity, cut-off times, and SLA. Each order takes the fastest, cheapest path to the customer automatically. One engine, one strategy, one source of truth for every node in the network, owned or not.

Sell Vendor Inventory as Confidently as Your Own

Overselling starts when vendor stock is a guess.

Real-time inventory spans every owned location and dropship vendor from a single source of truth, so availability on search, category, and product pages reflects what can actually ship. Capacity limits pull a maxed-out vendor out of rotation before orders pile up, EDI inventory feeds keep high-volume vendors in sync, and every order is stock-validated at acknowledgement, so the promise made at checkout is the one the vendor keeps.

Vendors Onboard Themselves. You Review, Map, and Flip the Switch to Active.

An invitation email is all it takes to start.

Vendors work through a guided, four-step onboarding stepper in their own portal: company details, users, business verification, and integration setup, with a configurable document checklist and in-app review that ends the email chase. They configure their own locations, hours, cut-offs, and capacity while documents are still under review, then connect by EDI or API, or simply work orders in the portal. Invite to first order in days, not months.

One Routing Engine Finds the Best Source for Every Order, Your DC or a Vendor’s

A separate dropship system means lag, reconciliation errors, and a second set of rules to maintain.

KIBO Dropship runs on the same routing engine as the rest of the platform, so vendor locations are evaluated alongside every warehouse and store by proximity, cost, capacity, cut-off times, and SLA. Each order takes the fastest, cheapest path to the customer automatically. One engine, one strategy, one source of truth for every node in the network, owned or not.

What’s in the Box

Contact Sales

Your Command Center for the Entire Vendor Ecosystem

One console governs every dropship partner. Invite vendors, review compliance documents, map catalog UPCs to vendor SKUs with contracted pricing, and control each partner’s fulfillment footprint from the admin your team already uses. It’s native, not a bolt-on, so vendor locations share the same routing engine, inventory service, and SLA framework as your own warehouses.

Vendor invitation and status management from onboarding to active
In-app document review with approve/reject and vendor-visible comments
Item mapping with contracted pricing that drives vendor invoices
Location mapping with real-time, bidirectional sync to vendor portals
Order-level SLA indicators (On Time / At Risk / Overdue) across all vendors

Vendors Onboard Themselves

A dedicated, vendor-facing portal gets partners live without burdening your team. A guided four-step journey shows progress at every step, while your document requirements keep compliance in your control. Once active, vendors manage their own locations and process orders end-to-end, from acknowledgement to shipping, without touching your internal systems.

Guided four-step onboarding with visible progress tracking
Configurable document requirements (required/optional, custom titles)
Self-managed users, roles, and fulfillment locations
In-portal order processing with SLA status on every order
Shipping label generation on your carrier accounts, or vendor-managed tracking

Every Order Trackable From Both Sides

A deterministic two-step workflow: vendors acknowledge and validate stock, then prepare shipments with ASNs, packing slips, and tracking. Invoices generate automatically at contracted cost, never storefront price, and the vendor’s PO number is your shipment number, so both sides work from the same record.

Two-step workflow: order acknowledgement → prepare shipments (ASN)
Partial fulfillment with reason-coded cancellations on shortfalls
Multi-package shipments with per-package tracking
Automated invoicing at contracted cost, including EDI 810
Immutable activity log; one shared PO/shipment number across portals

REST APIs and EDI Meet Vendors Where They Are

Connect each vendor through the channel that fits their maturity: the portal for the long tail, REST APIs for modern systems, and full EDI for high-volume partners. Vendors pick their mode during onboarding, and API extension points let you inject custom logic where you need it.

Portal, REST API, and EDI integration modes per vendor
Full EDI set: 850 PO, 855 acknowledgement, 856 ASN, 810 invoice, 846 inventory
Shipment translation with vendor SKUs and contracted pricing
EDI 850 and 810 generation directly from the shipment record
Before/after API extension points for custom integration logic

Vendor Locations Route Like Your Own

Every vendor location is a first-class node in the routing engine, evaluated on the same proximity, capacity, and promise logic as your warehouses. Vendors maintain their own hours, cut-offs, and holiday overrides, time-zone aware, and daily capacity limits guard against overcommitment. One fulfillment network across owned and third-party inventory.

Multi-location fulfillment per vendor, synced bidirectionally
Time-zone-aware operating hours and cut-offs with holiday overrides
Daily capacity limits (max orders/day) prevent overcommitment
Routing attributes and geo-coordinates drive node selection
Processing times feed estimated delivery dates and SLA timers

Your Command Center for the Entire Vendor Ecosystem

One console governs every dropship partner. Invite vendors, review compliance documents, map catalog UPCs to vendor SKUs with contracted pricing, and control each partner’s fulfillment footprint from the admin your team already uses. It’s native, not a bolt-on, so vendor locations share the same routing engine, inventory service, and SLA framework as your own warehouses.

Vendor invitation and status management from onboarding to active
In-app document review with approve/reject and vendor-visible comments
Item mapping with contracted pricing that drives vendor invoices
Location mapping with real-time, bidirectional sync to vendor portals
Order-level SLA indicators (On Time / At Risk / Overdue) across all vendors

KIBO Is Built for What Comes Next for Your Business

Launch Agentic Quickly

KIBO AI is native to the platform: automated engagement, merchandising, promotions, catalog management, and operations, with no separate implementation project. Bring your own model (Gemini, Anthropic, OpenAI, or open-weight) and keep control with approvals, a full audit trail of every agent run, and data access governed by your tenant’s permissions.

Compose Commerce Your Way

A MACH-certified, API-first foundation lets you launch with only the modules you need, such as search and checkout, and add catalog, promotions, order management, or subscriptions as you grow. REST and GraphQL APIs, typed SDKs, API extensions, and event webhooks cover every operation.

Scale Through Every Peak

Cloud-native services scale automatically for holiday rushes, flash sales, and viral demand, processing millions of orders without performance degradation.

Understand Performance in Real Time

Inline analytics and dashboards put KPIs in context across orders, inventory, and subscriptions. KIBO AI’s Analyze function lets business users ask questions in plain language instead of waiting on a data pull.

Stay Compliant
by Default

Independently audited and certified to the standards commerce demands: SOC 2 Type 2, SOC 3, and PCI DSS Level 1, with GDPR, CCPA, and CPRA privacy compliance built in.

Honest Answers to the Questions We Get

Is KIBO Dropship a native capability or a separate system?

Dropship is a native, pre-integrated module of the KIBO platform. It runs on the same data model, order routing engine, inventory service, and pricing services as owned-inventory fulfillment, with no separate dropship system to integrate or reconcile.

Can we expand assortment without holding inventory?

How does vendor onboarding work?

Does KIBO provide a portal for dropship vendors?

How are orders routed to dropship vendors?

Can we control vendor pricing and margins?

Can vendors ship on our carrier accounts?

How do vendors integrate with KIBO Dropship?

Vendors pick portal, API, or EDI during onboarding. The EDI set covers the full lifecycle: 850 (PO), 855 (acknowledgement), 856 (ASN), 810 (invoice), and 846 (inventory), for fully automated, high-volume operations on the same lifecycle and audit log.

Can we protect the customer promise from vendor overcommitment?

How do we monitor vendor performance?

What happens if a vendor can’t fulfill an order?

How are dropship returns handled?

Can we deactivate a vendor at any time?

BlogDropship Order Management: Vendor Onboarding, Inventory, and Routing BlogEnterprise Dropshipping on a Unified OMS Platform ResourceThe KIBO EDI Platform for Dropship, Marketplace, and Procurement

Delivery Promise Held. Reliably for All Inventory.

Global Brands Trust KIBO to Power Commerce.

Your Supplier Inventory Sits Halfway Across the World in Someone Else’s Warehouse?

Your Supplier Inventory Sits Halfway Across the World in Someone Else’s Warehouse?

One Routing Engine Finds the Best Source for Every Order, Your DC or a Vendor’s

Sell Vendor Inventory as Confidently as Your Own

Vendors Onboard Themselves. You Review, Map, and Flip the Switch to Active.

What’s in the Box

Your Command Center for the Entire Vendor Ecosystem

Vendors Onboard Themselves

Every Order Trackable From Both Sides

REST APIs and EDI Meet Vendors Where They Are

Vendor Locations Route Like Your Own