How we decide which supplier ships which item
A quick read on the cart-split optimizer — what it considers, what it ignores, and why a single-supplier order isn’t always cheaper.
By Eng @ shopdental
When you check out, your cart almost never goes out as one order. We split it across the cheapest combination of suppliers — but “cheapest” takes more than the per-line price into account.
What the optimizer balances
- Per-line offer price across every supplier that stocks the item
- Supplier-specific shipping thresholds (free over $X, flat $Y under)
- Carrier ETA — we won’t move a stat-needed item to a slower supplier just to save 80 cents
- In-stock vs. backordered status at the moment of checkout
Why splitting often beats single-supplier
When two of three items in your cart are cheapest at supplier A but the third is significantly cheaper at supplier B and would push A’s sub-cart below the free-shipping threshold anyway, splitting wins. The optimizer surfaces the savings on the cart screen so you can sanity-check the call.
Override is one click
If you’d rather keep an order with one supplier — for invoicing, or because of a contract — toggle “Single supplier” on the cart and we’ll re-route everything through your preferred vendor.