The challenge
The company is a premium DTC oral care brand with high order velocity and a fulfillment operation run through ShipBob. A significant gap in their Brightpearl-ShipBob integration created an operational problem: when orders were cancelled in Brightpearl after already being transmitted to ShipBob, there was no mechanism to propagate that cancellation to ShipBob — meaning ShipBob would continue picking, packing, and shipping orders that customers had already cancelled. The resulting wasted fulfillment effort, return overhead, and customer experience impact demanded a technical solution.
What we built
- Engineered a deleted and cancelled order handling mechanism within the Brightpearl-ShipBob integration that monitors for order cancellations in Brightpearl in real time
- Built automated cancellation propagation logic that submits cancellation requests to ShipBob immediately upon order cancellation in Brightpearl, before fulfillment activity begins
- Implemented timing and status logic to determine whether a ShipBob order is still cancellable, and to alert operations staff when an order has already progressed beyond the cancellation window
- Tested the cancellation flow against live order scenarios to validate that ShipBob correctly halts fulfillment activity upon receipt of the cancellation request
- Integrated exception notifications so the operations team is alerted to any orders that cannot be cancelled in ShipBob due to fulfillment progression
The outcome
- Eliminated the fulfillment of cancelled orders by ensuring cancellation signals flow from Brightpearl to ShipBob in real time
- Reduced wasted pick-and-pack labor and outbound shipping costs associated with fulfilling orders customers had already cancelled
- Improved the post-cancellation customer experience by preventing the dispatch of unwanted shipments
- Gave the The company operations team clear visibility into cancellation exceptions, enabling rapid intervention when orders cannot be stopped in time