Documentation has moved to help.whiplash.com/hc/en-us/

This documentation was deprecated 08/01/17. Information here may be incomplete or out of date.

Getting Started With Whiplash

The idea of handing off inventory and fulfillment responsibility to an outside party can be daunting - When do we make the switch? How can we make sure nothing falls through the cracks?

We get it. This is a critical time. We’ll be here to guide the process, and to make sure the transfer is seamless.

Here’s what to expect:

1. Importing Your Items

First thing's first. To fulfill your orders, we need to get a roster of your products into our system. Luckily this is a fairly easy step. We will automatically pull these in when you connect your webstore (ie. Shopify, Magento, etc) to Whiplash.

2. Creating a Ship Notice

A Ship Notice is a simple document that you create whenever you are shipping us product. This document gives our warehouse a heads up that stock is on the way and that we should be prepared to check it in.

3. Shipping Us Your Products

When shipping us your initial products, there are a few ways customers handle this - in terms of deciding what to send.

Typical Scenario: You currently receive + ship orders on a daily/regular basis.

If this is the case, we generally recommend sending us your inventory in two phases. The first shipment will be between 50-70% of your inventory (across all SKUs). This allows you to maintain fulfilling orders while the initial stock is en route to us. Create an individual Ship Notice for each shipment.

Once we have received & counted in the new stock we will begin shipping orders for which we have items in stock. You will automatically receive a notice that we have received your stock and it's been counted in.

Upon receiving this notice, we recommend creating a second Ship Notice and send us the remainder of your inventory. At this point we will be shipping orders as they arrive and you can cease any fulfillment.

**NOTE: We have created a few fail-safes to ensure orders are not fulfilled more than once during the transition:

  1. As Whiplash receives orders that are not yet in stock, they'll be held in the Items Unavailable queue, safely out of the way.
  2. Any order that you fulfill and archive (on your shopping cart side) will be automatically cancelled on the Whiplash side - and ignored.
  3. Similarly, any order that is fulfilled by Whiplash will automatically become archived (complete with shipping info) on the shopping cart side.
  4. As we count your inventory in, we'll begin shipping in-stock orders. So Whiplash begins shipping what it can gradually, rather than waiting until count-in has been fully completed.
  5. During this transaction, you may want to have Whiplash wait longer than normal to ship orders. The waiting period defaults to 1 hour, but some customers prefer waiting 24 hours initially. Orders will be in the Processing queue during this time. Gestation can be adjusted on your Shops tab in Preferences.