Alibris can send your orders straight into BookRouter™ instead of only emailing them to you. Their name for it is EDI Lite. Once it is running, Alibris sales take your stock down everywhere else automatically, the orders appear in Marketplace Orders, and you can mark them shipped with tracking without logging in to Alibris.
What changes
- New Alibris orders download by themselves, usually within the hour.
- The item is marked sold in your inventory and pulled from your other marketplaces, which is the protection against selling the same copy twice.
- Alibris sales show up in your Sales reports beside your other channels.
- You can mark an order shipped, add tracking, or cancel it from BookRouter, and Alibris is told.
- Alibris stops emailing you purchase notifications. That is by design on their side once EDI Lite is active. BookRouter emails you instead.
Step 1: ask Alibris to enable EDI Lite
Only Alibris can switch this on for your seller account. Email sellers@alibris.com from the address registered with them and ask them to enable EDI Lite order delivery on your account. Wait for their confirmation before moving on.
The day they turn it on, their purchase notification emails stop. Do step 2 as soon as you hear back, and leave BookRouter's Email new orders switch on, so you are never without a heads-up.
Step 2: switch it on in BookRouter
- Go to Routing › Marketplaces and open Alibris.
- In the Sync Rules card, switch on Auto-mark sold items.
- Leave Email new orders on.
- Click Save.
That one switch turns the whole order feed on. No new credentials are needed: Alibris uses the same Seller ID and password you already gave BookRouter for your inventory uploads. The first save also prepares your order folder on the Alibris server, and tells you if anything went wrong.
Your first orders should appear under Sales & Customers › Marketplace Orders within an hour or two of the next sale.
Step 3: to close orders out from here as well
Marking orders shipped on Alibris from BookRouter needs one more switch, which covers every marketplace: Settings › Store Settings › Shipping & Fulfillment › Send order updates to the marketplace. See Marking a marketplace order shipped or cancelled.
What Alibris expects of you
These are Alibris rules, not ours, and they matter more once orders stop arriving by email:
- Confirm orders within two business days, or one business day for Trackable Expedited orders.
- Ship with the Alibris packing slip. Each order carries a link to the slip Alibris generated for it, shown on the order page. Your own packing slip does not satisfy this.
- Check the order source. Some Alibris orders ship to an Alibris distribution centre rather than to the buyer. The address on the order is the one to use.
- Trackable Expedited orders must have a tracking number when you mark them shipped.
Tracking numbers
Tracking goes to Alibris along with the shipped status. Alibris accepts it only from carriers on their own list: UPS, USPS, FedEx, DHL, UPS Mail Innovations, DHL Global Mail, OnTrac, Canada Post and Royal Mail. If you ship with something else, the order is still reported as shipped but without the number, and BookRouter tells you so. Add it on the Alibris site if the buyer needs it.
Turning it off
Switching Auto-mark sold items back off stops the order downloads. Ask Alibris to turn EDI Lite off on their side too, or their purchase emails will not come back.
EDI Lite is about orders only. Your Alibris inventory uploads are separate and keep running either way. See Connecting Alibris.