Combine orders automatically

This is a very complex feature to add, so I understand why it hasn't been done. Let me try to help by answering your questions from your 9/22/15 post. 1) We combine orders daily. We have about 7 combined orders on average, but anywhere from 1 or 2 to 12 and more. We don't combine orders on Monday, but that's because it's almost double the volume of any other day, and the process is currently time consuming. (It can take thirty minutes or more to work through a list of 10+ combined orders, because we have to locate and match pick slips.) 2) There are a few cases where we don't combine orders that we normally wouldn't. The most common case is a difference in shipping speeds. For example, if Bob ordered a large speaker that is going FedEx, but also ordered a small pedal that has free USPS Priority shipping, we would not combine that order because the cost would be prohibitive. To make it even more complex, we probably would combine Bob's orders if he ordered a small pedal and a pack of guitar strings, because they'd both fit in the same small Priority package. The shipping is the most common reason not to combine orders, but there are others: international shipping (cheaper to sent 2x First Class than 1x Priority), customer requests, and stock issues (we have Item A but not Item B). TL;DR version: a way to automate the process would be welcome, but we would need there to be control over what gets automated. As a middle ground, perhaps a one-click combine option? Clicking yes on a screen for 10 orders is better than going through the manual process each time. Thanks for reading.

This feature would be extremely helpful for us also! We mainly sell on eBay and have an about 4-7 orders that need to be manually combined every day. We currently sort all the orders by Username and then combine them manually, a feature that will automatically combine orders by email / marketplace-username (while checking that the shipping address on those orders match) would be extremely helpful and will allow us to streamline our operation even more. Thank you!

It seems many users don't know there is already an alert for combining orders. The alert should be in a pop up or additional window type form not hidden in the corner. When you click on the Alerts that tell you that have open orders for the same customer you should be able to choose to combine them right then and there. It gives you the option to dismiss alerts so maybe you can have a "confirm" or "take action" button. I'd say the majority of the time it is less money for shipping to combine both orders, maybe only 1-2% of orders does it make sense to ship separate because of a flat rate option or some reason like that. Then if you get to the order and in that rare case you see they are better split, than split them as you would normally.

It's critical to provide a means to automatically combine orders with the same name and shipping address. Our business sells using eBay, and many buyers do not use the cart feature, and instead place many, consecutive orders for multiple items, meaning each item purchased comes in as a separate order in ShipStation. This happens on literally a daily basis, and each day we spend anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes manually combining all the orders that can be shipped together, since the same person purchased them. We have to manually combine these orders so we aren't losing money on shipping charges. There are literally no times when we do NOT want to combine these orders. ShipStation already has the "order alert" feature, which tells you when orders can be combined. If ShipStation already has the means to detect WHEN orders can be combined, why don't we have the option to simply have them combined automatically? I don't think we're asking for something that needs to apply to everyone. We're just asking for a feature that we can turn on it we want it. Again, ShipStation already detects when orders can be combined; why can't we have the option to tell ShipStation to just combine them automatically?

Yeah, no joke. This is a feature that I am getting VERY TIRED of waiting on. I can't think of more of a no brainer than this feature. One person on here made it sound like rocket science that would be incredibly hard to implement. All that is needed to start with is a VERY simple added rule to the automation area to "combine orders". After that, perhaps more in depth automations can be added, like exactly what type of orders to combine, etc. But a simple "combine all orders from the same buyer" would suffice for many sellers, such as myself. The same buyer could be matched simply by having the same name and address. A web designer should be able to have this feature added before their first coffee break in the morning. It's not that difficult. So I don't see why this even needs to be "under review" for so long! Add this feature and let's move on! I'm quiet sure the VAST majority of sellers would implement it into their workflow. It's not like we all sell refrigerators, that require separate shipments.

Thanks for all of your helpful thoughts and comments! Since our last comment below, we’ve released our native inventory management solution (and third-party inventory counts like FBA, Stitch Labs, ChannelAdvisor, and recently Shopify), automatically update return shipments as received, request a USPS pickup, and package sets for your multiple package shipments. We’re constantly running on all cylinders prioritizing, designing, and building new features from ideas and comments here in the Product Feedback forum so thank you for your patience! All of your comments are read daily and each example you add helps fuel the process of turning ideas into features. At this time, this idea is under review and if you haven’t added your thoughts yet please do! Helpful information or information not yet discussed are exactly the types of comments we’re looking for to help push this idea closer to the finish line of becoming a feature.

This is an obvious change. I understand we can combine orders. But the problem isn't the ability to get the orders to combine, but rather is that it requires a user to filter by name and physically look for orders from the same name.There are more important things to worry about when printing labels then saving $2 on a shipment etc. It'd be simpler to just combine them for us automatically, especially if to the exact first, last name and address.

When is this feature getting added?!?!?

Please add this feature to save everybody time to make our life easier. I used some other software like sixbit which do have option to remind "some of the orders can be combined"when you bulk ship orders.

I will highlight multiple shipping for the same address and suggest combine.

only if orders are verified , because there is a lot of situation that customers placing orders accidentally 2 times and you'll need to make sure that it is not double order

I too use eBay and buyers will usually not use the cart feature and instead check out multiple separate times, resulting in lots of orders that can be combined. The in-eBay shipping feature will throw up a warning when batching orders that they match. Shipstation has alerts for this, but I will inevitably miss them if I have to rely on myself to check for them every time. This alert should be integrated into the label creation process. It would be a great value proposition that saves your customers money.

This should be an optional option. I have never run into a customer placing duplicate orders and we process over 600 a month. The customer info and shipping address would have to match and also the shipping rate selected would have to match to have it automatically combined.

'@Admin - any update on this?

I would love to see orders abe to be combined! i know its possible, but does not work for woocommerce integration from what i understand. If you combine 2 orders they get merged > the problem is only one order technically gets shipped. > When our sync to the website occurs the second order stays open! If there were a way to automatically take care of BOTH orders i would be in, would save us thousands if not tens of thousands! 4000 orders on black friday alone! tons to be combined!

We really need this!

we really need this for groupon.....we need orders to be combined automatically based on the "parent id" that they provide. This is so integral and crucial to our business. We cannot manually combined hundreds of orders a day and we dont want to look for another shipping manager that is integrated with groupon that has that capability. Tanga, ebay and amazon all have orders that come in combined but groupon doesnt .

Can we please hurry this up!

Not sure why this isn't a feature already considering five years since its been requested. People who sell via eBay have to do this with hundreds of orders every day because nobody uses the cart option. There is also never a reason to not do this because it saves on shipping costs and they are going to the same address anyway.

The only time I don't want to combine orders is when they are for the exact same list of items for the same total amount. This is 99.9% chance that it was an unintentional duplication. The rule should be "if the orders are for different totals, auto combine". "If orders are for the exact same total, alert me before combining".

Please provide more information regarding combined orders in the API data as well. The data you provide is minimal.

Any update on this?

Hey @Ryan, thanks for reaching out. We're still interested in hearing more about the business challenges here and are still researching what this might look like. If you haven't added your challenges yet, please join the conversation.

IMO there is no reason NOT to automatically combine orders that have the same shipping address. It is very easy for my employees to miss the little notification in the top right each time they sign in as combining orders doesn't happen too often (maybe 7-10 times a week and we do 500 orders in a month). There are times that we do not want to combine orders, but in those cases we can just split the order. An alternative to this is to simply make the notification easier to see. Perhaps adding a pop up box when ship station opens letting the user know that they might want to combine eligible orders.

Our issue is when the same customer makes 2 separate orders. While it may not happen extremly often it is frustrating when it does happen and we do not catch it. When this happens we usually do not catch it until it is too late and the orders are already shipped separately. Just an idea of a solution to this problem would be an automatic pop up window that notifies the user that there appears to be 2 or more orders with the same shipping information. Such window could show a summary of the 2 orders and ask the user if they would like to combine those orders now. This would allow some human intervention to prevent the system from accidentally combining 2 orders that otherwise should not be combined but at the same time allow for easy and quick combination of the 2 orders.