In this article, learn about:
How to receive and process an order with Wayfair
How Wayfair defines a Perfect Order
Strategies for maintaining compliance with Wayfair
Wayfair Inc. is a furniture and home goods e-commerce company based in Boston, Massachusetts. Wayfair generated approximately $12 billion in revenue in 2024 and employs more than 16,000 people worldwide.
Wayfair’s prominence in the market makes it an attractive prospect for home goods suppliers. However, to be successful with Wayfair, it’s essential to have a firm grasp of its order management and shipping policies.
The following article will enumerate these policies, as well as how to process your first order with Wayfair and how to avoid unnecessary compliance issues.
How to Process an Order
Once you’ve received an order from Wayfair, there are a few steps to follow to ensure that the order is packed and shipped as accurately and efficiently as possible.
Reviewing the PO Details
Suppliers are notified of incoming orders via email. Once you’ve reviewed this email, log in to the Wayfair Partner Home portal to process the order.
Once you’ve logged in to the portal, navigate over to the Order Management page.
On the Order Management page, open orders are listed under the Purchase Orders tab.
This page also has filtering options on the right side, which will be useful once your Wayfair order volume grows. You can filter orders by:
PO Number
Order Status
Ship By Date Range
Ship Class
Carrier
Destination
Request for Pickup
Order Date Range
The first order will be listed under the search bar at the top of the page. From here, suppliers can click directly into the PO to confirm the order details. Make sure to check:
Part ID: Ensure that your internal reference number for the item matches the item description on the right.
Price: This represents the wholesale price of the item. Suppliers should make sure to check the accuracy of prices, as any discrepancies in price can trigger costly deductions.
Weight: Check to make sure that the shipping weight is correct. This can be adjusted through the portal if needed.
Piece count: This number represents the total number of cartons used in shipping the PO. This can also be adjusted if necessary.
NOTE: If you do adjust the weight or piece count, make sure that you’re also printing updated labels.
If all the details are correct, click the Acknowledge button at the bottom of the window. This will change the Order Status indicator from New to Processing.
Printing Labels
Once the order is confirmed, it’s time to print the labels and packing slips necessary for shipping. Every carton needs a shipping label, and every Wayfair PO needs a packing slip.
Printing labels indicates that the order is ready for collection. As a result, before you print labels, make sure that the full PO is picked, packed, and ready to be shipped.
To print labels, select the PO to bring up the details in the sidebar on the right-hand side of the page. Click on Print Documents.
Choose the documents you wish to print—in this case, Shipping Labels and Packing Slips—and choose the correct Ready for Pickup date.
Click on Download, which will create a downloadable PDF of the labels and packing slip.
After you’ve printed the labels, a shipping manifest should be generated. Ask the driver to sign this document and retain it for your records.
Booking the Carrier
After the PO has been reviewed and the labels and packing slips printed, it’s time to schedule the carrier to collect the shipment. Wayfair does not schedule collections on suppliers’ behalf, and understanding this portion of the process is critical to a vendor's continued success with Wayfair.
As a part of the supplier onboarding process, a carrier setup email with the subject line of “Wayfair Carrier Information” was sent from eulogisticsetup@wayfair.com. This email contains important information regarding carrier account creation and maintenance.
Each carrier that Wayfair works with has different processes for booking shipment pickup. Suppliers should follow the instructions laid out in the carrier setup email to ensure they’re fully compliant with the carrier’s guidelines.
For more information on specific carriers and their policies, check out Wayfair’s booking guides here.
A Perfect Order at Wayfair
Wayfair identifies a minimum acceptable operational performance level for its partners, defined as having at least 40% of total orders being “Perfect Orders” within a given 12-month period.
Perfect Orders are based on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) demonstrating overall performance. Wayfair’s KPIs include:
Fill Rate: Shows whether a specific order was shipped on or before the assigned Must Ship By Date (MSBD)
Incident Rate: Shows whether the order has any customer-reported incidents, such as damages, defects, missing parts, or other issues
Backorder (Out of Stock): Shows whether the order was backordered due to items being out of stock
Backorder (Discontinued): Shows whether the order was backordered due to items being discontinued
If an order fulfills the KPIs listed above—i.e., if an order was shipped on or before the MSBD, didn’t have any reported incidents, and wasn’t backordered for any reason—then Wayfair considers it to be a Perfect Order.
If a supplier falls below 40% Perfect Orders, Wayfair reserves the right to suspend or permanently deactivate the supplier’s Wayfair account.
Expectations for Supplier Operations and Communication
Wayfair maintains certain expectations for how its suppliers conduct their business and communicate with partners, customers, and manufacturers. Below are some of the specific operations and communication expectations for Wayfair suppliers.
Order Management and Handling
All POs must be shipped by the MSBD to ensure customers receive their orders on time. Late shipments will affect a supplier’s Fill Rate performance metric, which can have an impact on ongoing business with Wayfair.
If a PO can’t be shipped by the MSBD, then the supplier is responsible for reporting that delay to Wayfair. Make sure to update your lead times as necessary to ensure you can ship orders by the MSBD.
Wayfair expects its suppliers to maintain a minimum of 98% on-time orders for Small Parcels and 97% on-time orders for Large Parcels.
All shipments should be compliant with Wayfair’s packaging guidelines.
Wayfair should be kept apprised of any changes to warehouse operating days and hours through the Warehouse Management page in the Wayfair portal.
Inventory Management
Wayfair should be updated with changes to suppliers' inventory regularly, either through the online Inventory Management page on the Wayfair portal or through EDI.
Suppliers should report their inventory stock status to Wayfair at least once per day.
Inventory should only be reported as “on hand” if it is currently in stock and available to be fulfilled within the stated lead time.
As soon as a product has gone out of stock, make sure that you report this to Wayfair, to ensure that you’re avoiding out-of-stock backorders.
If you’ve discontinued a product, make sure that you remove it from Wayfair either through EDI or the portal’s Product Discontinuation page.
Communication
Wayfair expects its suppliers to check the partner portal regularly—a minimum of three to four times per day—to encounter updates in a timely manner.
Order Related Alerts and Order Related Tickets should be solved within 9 business hours, which Wayfair defines as from Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM in your local time zone. Failure to respond within 9 business hours may result in a supplier’s products being removed from the website.
For order status update requests or any other requests which directly impact customers, Wayfair requires a response within 4 business hours.
Supplier contact information should be kept up to date via the My Team page.
Preventing Compliance Issues
Compliance issues—whether from late shipments, backordered products, mislabeled cartons, or any others—can result in costly deductions and become a thorn in the side of suppliers. Included below are a few of the major compliance issues affecting Wayfair suppliers, as well as ways in which these problems can be prevented.
Inventory Accuracy
When an order is delayed due to an inaccurate inventory listing on the website—which, typically, is due to out-of-stocks or the item being discontinued—then Wayfair customers are four times more likely than baseline to ultimately cancel the order in full. These inaccurate listings usually stem from either inventory feeds being updated infrequently, or mistakes within the inventory feed data.
Wayfair determines a suppliers’ inventory accuracy by totaling the number of orders with an order delay and a reason code of “Out of Stock” or “Item Discontinued.” Suppliers are expected to maintain an inventory accuracy rate of 99.75%.
Strategies for Preventing Inaccurate Inventory Order Delays
It’s best practice to send your inventory feeds to Wayfair at the same time that orders are being pulled, to keep an up-to-date inventory count. Wayfair expects its partners to send an inventory feed at a minimum of once per day.
Make sure that when the inventory feed is sent, the actual number of units available for fulfillment is stated, rather than the estimated number.
As soon as an item is out of stock, send an updated inventory feed to Wayfair so it can be marked on the site.
To avoid inventory alerts, ensure that the inventory feed represents all active part numbers.
If a supplier has multiple warehouses, they should be reporting inventory, including inventory quantity, to Wayfair at the warehouse level.
Suppliers should regularly review active product listings and update Wayfair about any discontinued items.
Suppliers should make sure they’re using accurate back-in-stock dates for out-of-stock products.
Wayfair recommends that its suppliers invest in warehouse management systems (WMSs), enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, and EDI integration, to increase the frequency of inventory feeds.
Late Shipments
Wayfair defines a late shipment as any shipment not sent by the MSBD. Wayfair expects its suppliers to maintain a 98% on-time shipping rate.
Strategies for Preventing Late Shipments
Suppliers should only report items as in-stock that can be shipped on or before the expected shipping date.
It’s recommended that suppliers implement a First In First Out (FIFO) process, which means that the first orders received should also be the first orders fulfilled.
As soon as an order is ready, the pickup should be scheduled, in order to avoid unforeseen delays.
Regularly review your warehouse operating schedules to make sure that they are up to date with Wayfair.
For large parcels, use UCC-128 labels, which help to streamline order processing.
Adjust lead times when necessary to provide the most up-to-date shipping information possible.
Wayfair recommends that suppliers regularly review fulfillment and lead time performance using the Fulfilment Performance Diagnostics and Lead Time Performance tools.
Cancelled Orders
Wayfair’s cancellation policy has three elements to it:
If a customer cancels an order within 30 minutes of placing it, Wayfair will automatically honor the cancellation request.
If a customer requests a cancellation outside of the 30-minute window, Wayfair will still automatically honor the request if:
The supplier has backordered the ordered products by at least 72 hours from the original estimated shipping date, or;
The supplier does not respond to the cancellation request within 24 hours, excluding weekends and reported warehouse closures.
If the supplier denies the cancellation request, then Wayfair will expect:
A fulfillment confirmation from the supplier with an estimated shipping date less than 3 calendar days ahead, and;
A transportation scan less with an estimated shipping date of less than 5 calendar days ahead.
If a supplier ships an order after the cancellation request has been approved, or if the supplier denies the cancellation without justification, then the supplier will be found liable for the product cost, taxes, and shipping cost.
Strategies for Preventing Cancelled Orders
Ensure that your inventory levels are up to date, following the steps listed above.
Check to make sure that your order emails are being sent to the correct contacts.
Update your Warehouse Calendar with any closures or anything else that would affect your ability to process orders during a period of time.
If you have an agreement with Wayfair to use one of your own carriers, ensure that you’re updating your order tracking information, as shipped orders cannot be marked as cancelled.
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