Marking a marketplace order shipped or cancelled

Turn it on first

Go to Settings › Store Settings › Shipping & Fulfillment and switch on Send order updates to the marketplace, under the heading Marketplace Status Updates.

Until that switch is on, nothing is ever sent to a venue. Changing an order status only updates your own records.

How to mark an order shipped

1. Open the order from Sales & Customers › Marketplace Orders.
2. Set Order status to Shipped.
3. Click Save.
4. A confirmation appears telling you exactly what will be sent to that marketplace. Confirm it, and the update goes out with the save.

Afterwards a message tells you whether the venue accepted the update. Nothing is sent silently, and re-saving an order that is already shipped does not send a second notice.

What each marketplace does with it

• AbeBooks: the shipment is confirmed on your AbeBooks account. AbeBooks charges the buyer's card at that moment, exactly as if you had marked it shipped on AbeBooks yourself.
• Amazon: Amazon requires a carrier and tracking number with every shipment confirmation, so the most recent tracking recorded on the order is sent along with it. Without tracking the confirmation cannot be sent.
• eBay: the order is marked shipped on eBay. Tracking is optional there, but it is included when you have it.
• Alibris: a status file is uploaded to Alibris, with tracking on the shipped line where you have recorded it. Alibris collects these files once an hour.
• Biblio: a fulfilment file is delivered to Biblio, carrying the shipment and any tracking. Biblio processes it on their side, so the update is not acknowledged back to us straight away.

Cancelling an order

Set the status to Cancelled and save. What happens next depends on the venue:

• AbeBooks: the order is rejected on AbeBooks and the buyer is not charged.
• Alibris: a cancellation line goes out in the next status file.
• Biblio: a cancellation goes out in the next fulfilment file. Biblio buyers pay at checkout rather than at shipping, so confirm in your Biblio account that the buyer has actually been refunded.
• Amazon: cancellations cannot be sent from here. Cancel the order in Amazon Seller Central as well, so the buyer is refunded. The confirmation dialog will remind you.
• eBay: same, in eBay Seller Hub.

Once an order has been marked shipped, a cancellation can no longer reverse it at the venue, and the buyer has usually been charged by then. Marking it cancelled here still corrects your own records, but the money comes back a different way: on AbeBooks and Biblio use Issue Return/Refund on the order, and on Alibris, Amazon and eBay refund it in their own dashboard.

Tracking numbers

Where shipping labels are enabled on your account, buying a label or entering a tracking number on the order sends that tracking to the marketplace as well, and marks the order shipped in the same step. If your account does not have shipping labels yet, the Shipping and tracking card shows a short note in its place, and you can still mark orders shipped from the status dropdown.

Orders you ship at the venue instead

On eBay and Amazon the sync runs both ways. If you ship or cancel an order inside eBay or Seller Central, BookRouter picks that up on its next check, moves the order out of New, and records the venue's tracking. You will not be asked to send an update you have already made there.

The other venues do not report status back to us. See What each marketplace can sync for the full picture.

Seeing what was sent

Every update BookRouter sends for an order is listed in the marketplace updates card at the bottom of the order page, with the date, what was sent, and whether the venue took it. It is the record to check before you send anything twice.