My friend Cory Zue has been publishing his live coding sessions, so I decided to watch one and record my notes. My background vs. Cory’s I’ve read a lot of Cory’s blog. We’re both Python developers, but he specializes in Django, whereas I’ve always worked with thinner frameworks like Flask. I have no experience with Django, but I’m comfortable in Python. Dev environment Timestamp 0:10 OS: Ubuntu I expected Cory to be an OS X guy.

My friend Cory Zue has been publishing his live coding sessions, so I decided to watch one and record my notes.

My background vs. Cory’s

I’ve read a lot of Cory’s blog. We’re both Python developers, but he specializes in Django, whereas I’ve always worked with thinner frameworks like Flask. I have no experience with Django, but I’m comfortable in Python.

I recently discovered Syncthing, an open-source tool for syncing files across multiple machines.

Setting up Syncthing on my personal devices was easy, but I went on an interesting journey deploying it to a cloud server.

Why run Syncthing in the cloud?

Syncthing synchronizes files peer to peer. That means that at least two of my devices have to be online and running Syncthing simultaneously to stay in sync. If I change a file on my desktop, shut it down, and then take my laptop with me on a work trip, my laptop won’t pick up the changes I made on my desktop.

Highlights

• We’ve completed transitioning TinyPilot’s fulfillment to a third-party vendor.
• The local team is escaping their months-long stint in “urgent mode.”
• Now that production speed isn’t a bottleneck, I can choose a price that optimizes for profitability.

Goal grades

At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals:

Over the past six months, I’ve been transitioning the fulfillment processes at my e-commerce business to a third-party logistics (3PL) vendor.

I didn’t know anything about 3PLs before starting this process, so there were a lot of things I didn’t know to ask about. Here are the list of questions that I recommend e-commerce merchants ask a 3PL if they’re considering working with them for fulfillment.

Customer profile

• Do you have other clients whose order volumes are similar to mine?
  • What’s the minimum and maximum order volume you can support?
• Do you have other clients whose products are similar to mine in price?
• Do you have other clients whose products are similar to mine in weight and volume?

Integration with e-commerce platforms

• What’s the process of connecting to my e-commerce platform?
  • Do I install an app?
  • Do I have to make you admin in my Shopify store?
• How quickly does your order management system sync with my e-commerce platform?
  • i.e., when you print a shipping label, how quickly do I see that reflected in Shopify?
• How do I present your shipping rates to my customers?
  • Can I present real-time shipping rates from your couriers or do we need to use flat shipping fees?

Recordkeeping / auditing

• How often do you do stocktakes?
• Do I have access to your inventory tracking system?
  • If not, how frequently do you share reports of inventory counts and changes?
• How will you share records of inventory changes with me?
  • i.e., When did products arrive at your warehouse? When did they go out for customer orders? When did stocktakes happen?

Schedule

• Which days of the week do you fulfill orders?
• What holidays do you observe?
• What’s the typical turnaround time for fulfilling an order?

Shipping

• Do you pass through postage costs directly from couriers or do you add a surcharge?
• Which shipping couriers and services do you support for domestic orders?
• Which shipping couriers and services do you support for international orders?
  • Can you ship international orders delivered duty paid (DDP)?
• What’s the cutoff time for same-day shipping?

Payment

• What are your fees?
• How do you accept payment?
  • Do you charge a surcharge for different payment options (e.g., surcharge for credit cards)?

Handling issues and unusual orders

• What’s your error rate?
  • i.e., how often do customers receive the wrong item or wrong quantities?
• Who absorbs costs of a fulfillment error?
  • What if we have to re-ship with expedited shipping to meet a customer deadline?
  • What if you sent a more expensive item and the customer has already opened it or refuses to return it?
• Who absorbs costs for lost inventory at the warehouse?
  • e.g., warehouse confirms receipt of 100 items, ships 75 over the course of the next month, but the next stocktake shows only 23 remaining (100 - 75 - 23 = 2 are missing)
• How do we handle it if a customer places an order and then emails me to make a change?
  • Will changes in my e-commerce platform immediately sync to your order management system?
• How do we handle it when a customer asks us to hold off on fulfilling an order?
  • What’s the process of pausing fulfillment on an order?
  • Will your order management system recognize Shopify’s “pause fulfillment” feature?

Location

• Where are your warehouses located?
  • Note: Depending on your tax situation, fulfilling your orders from a warehouse in a state outside of your headquarters means you’re responsible for collecting and paying sales tax in the warehouse’s state. Keep this in mind, as filing taxes in a new state is a significant administrative burden.

Insurance

• Does your insurance cover the value of our property?
• If not:
  • What year was the warehouse built?
  • How many stories does the warehouse have?
  • Does the warehouse have wood frame construction?
  • Does the warehouse have a sprinkler system?