Partial Delivery

A split shipment occurs when an order is shipped in multiple shipments because not all items can be shipped at the same time. The customer places a single order and pays once, but the items arrive in two or more packages. This typically happens when one of the items is on backorder with the supplier, and the store does not want to hold up the rest of the order.

The term is also used to refer to each individual shipment. “First partial shipment” is the package being sent now, with the rest to follow later. A partial shipment does not change what the customer has purchased or paid for. It is simply a record of what has actually been shipped and when.

The alternative is to split the order into two separate orders. This results in the customer having two order numbers for a single purchase, two invoices in the accounting system, and the question of how to allocate shipping costs between them. That’s why most systems, including Shoporama, stick to a single order and add the packages as a record.

In Shoporama, the order retains a single price, a single invoice, a single payment transaction, and a single shipping address, and it doesn’t change to “Shipped” until all items have been shipped. This means that the invoice number, payment processing, and transfer to the accounting software occur exactly once, with the last package. The customer receives an email for each package listing the items in that specific package and the tracking number, and in the order list, you can see the status of each order. Read more in the article “Partial Delivery: Send Part of the Order Now and the Rest Later.”