Connect the channels
Import channel orders and map customer, product and delivery details into a shared order format.
By Tim Wang - Development Manager, tPanel - LinkedIn -> - August 2026
Everau/Tangwealth sells apparel through its own online store, marketplaces and resellers. Each channel had its own order format, and each warehouse provider needed different information. Staff were translating between them in spreadsheets, then copying tracking details back after dispatch.
The project has since expanded with a dedicated wholesale customer portal, giving buyers a place to view authorised products and prices, submit orders and check progress.
- Client
- Everau/Tangwealth, a traditional apparel brand expanding online
- Channels
- Own store, marketplace channels and resellers
- Fulfilment
- Third-party warehouse providers, via API
- Order hub outcome
- ~80% less repetitive manual work, client estimate
- Stack
- PHP - Laravel - MySQL
- Infrastructure
- AWS
- First launch
- Built in about 8 weeks, live in 2020
- Today
- Laravel 13 - PHP 8.4
8
Sales channels connected
4
Warehouse providers
~150
Orders a day
6 yrs
In production
Who this case study is for
Does your team handle orders this way?
- Orders arrive from your store, marketplaces and resellers in different formats.
- Staff download orders and reformat them in spreadsheets before sending them for fulfilment.
- You use several warehouse providers, each with its own API and order requirements.
- Staff copy tracking numbers from warehouse systems back into each sales channel.
- Each new sales channel adds another set of daily admin tasks.
- Available connector apps do not cover all your channels or warehouse providers.
An existing order management product may already cover these tasks. Section 05 explains what to check before considering a custom hub.
tPanel's role
What the Hub Took Over
The build covers order movement and the screens staff need when a transfer cannot complete automatically.
Connect fulfilment
Route orders to warehouse providers and return tracking details to the originating sales channel.
Keep exceptions visible
Review failed transfers, handle partial shipments and use manual imports when a connection needs attention.
01
The Daily Work: Export, Reformat, Send, Repeat
Each sales channel exported orders differently, using its own fields for addresses, product variants and other details. The warehouse providers also had their own requirements for receiving orders.
Staff logged into each channel, downloaded the day's orders and reformatted the files in spreadsheets. They then sent the orders to the relevant warehouses. Once the goods shipped, staff collected tracking numbers and entered them back into the original sales channels.
A missed order or a tracking number entered against the wrong record meant extra checking for staff and an incorrect delivery status for the customer. As more channels were added, the team had more versions of this process to maintain.
The workload grew in two ways
- More orders meant more manual handling. Staff had to repeat the same steps for each order, even when the products and delivery arrangements were familiar.
- New channels added different requirements. Each brought another login, export format and process for updating order status.
Everau/Tangwealth needed a system that could collect these orders, convert them into a standard format and exchange order and tracking details with the warehouses.
02
What Changed for Everau/Tangwealth's Team
The hub handles routine imports and tracking updates. Staff can spend their time on orders that need a decision or a correction.
~80% less repetitive manual work. This is the estimate provided by Louis W., Everau/Tangwealth's E-Commerce Director, in his feedback below.
- Automated order imports. Connected channels feed orders into the hub in a consistent format.
- Automatic tracking updates. Warehouse dispatch details are sent back to the original sales channel.
- Staff can focus on exceptions. Routine transfers run automatically, while failed imports and dispatch requests are flagged for review.
- Further connections reuse the existing workflow. New adapters can use the routing, reporting and status handling already in the hub.
03
One Order Record, From Import to Dispatch
The hub gives each order a standard internal record. Channel adapters translate incoming data into that record; warehouse adapters translate it into the format needed for fulfilment. Routing and reporting can then use the same fields across channels.
Imports run on a schedule. The hub routes orders to warehouse providers, receives dispatch details and sends tracking updates back to the channel where the order originated. A new provider needs its own mapping and tests, while the existing workflow can be reused.
Import orders
The hub checks each channel for new orders on a schedule. Staff can see the last sync time on the dashboard and check whether an import needs attention.
Standardise the data
Customer details, addresses, product variants and discounts are mapped to the same fields inside the hub. Reports and fulfilment processes can then use those fields across all channels.
Assign a warehouse
Routing rules consider the delivery location, stock levels and shipping cost. The hub sends each order to the selected warehouse through that provider's API.
Update tracking
When a warehouse dispatches an order, the hub receives the tracking number and sends it back to the sales channel. This updates the order status without staff copying details between systems.
The routine flow is only part of the system. Failed transfers and stock syncs appear on the dashboard for review. Repeated scheduled-job failures trigger an alert to tPanel after a few hours, and staff can upload orders or tracking details manually while an API issue is investigated.
Partial shipments are tracked at order and line-item level. If only some items have left the warehouse, the order stays partially shipped until the remaining items are dispatched.
These checks and fallback options are part of the system integration, alongside the connections that move orders between platforms.
04
Managing Products, Resellers and Campaigns
The hub also manages the products, resellers and campaigns associated with each order. Staff can maintain those records and review orders in the same system.
Product access varies by reseller. A product can be made available to selected resellers, and stock held in different locations can be assigned separately. Staff can update these permissions as commercial arrangements change.
Orders are linked to their reseller and campaign, allowing the team to report on both without combining separate spreadsheets.
Screenshots from the live system. Client names, addresses, order numbers and revenue figures have been obscured.
Together, these features make the hub an internal business system for the online operation as well as a connection between sales channels and warehouses.
The first version went live in 2020 after about eight weeks of development. By August 2026, it connected eight sales channels and four warehouse providers and handled around 150 orders a day. These figures describe the live system at that point, rather than a tested capacity limit.
"
This custom order hub cut our repetitive manual work by around 80%, so we can spend more time on the product itself. tPanel has also been very responsive - every issue we had was resolved very quickly.
05
A New Wholesale Portal for Everau/Tangwealth's Buyers
The order hub brings sales-channel orders into the team's internal workflow. Everau/Tangwealth's new wholesale feature adds a customer-facing entry point: buyers can sign in, browse the products and prices made available to them, place an order and check its progress.
The wholesale portal is a new module in the Everau/Tangwealth project. It gives customers a direct way to order while administrators retain control over catalogue access and order approval.
What wholesale customers can do
- Use a dedicated login. Enter the wholesale customer area through its own login entry point.
- See the available catalogue. Browse the products and prices an administrator has made accessible.
- Place an order themselves. Submit their selection directly through the portal.
- Check order progress. Return to the customer area to view how their order is progressing.
What administrators control
- Product and price visibility. Determine which products and prices are available to wholesale customers.
- Order review. Review the orders customers submit through the portal.
- Approval or rejection. Decide whether to approve or reject an order, keeping an explicit business decision in the workflow.
From customer login to order progress
Enter the portal
The buyer signs in through the dedicated wholesale login.
Select and submit
The buyer chooses from their available products and prices, then places an order.
Review the order
An administrator reviews the submission and can approve or reject it.
Return for updates
The buyer can view order progress from the customer area.
Customer self-service, with business control
Customers can complete the ordering task and check progress themselves. Everau/Tangwealth's team still controls what is available for purchase and whether an order is approved. This separates the customer's actions from the administrator's decisions, with a defined place for both.
The wholesale module adds a customer-facing workflow to the project. The channel imports, warehouse routing and tracking connections described elsewhere in this case study remain the order hub's scope.
06
When an Order Hub Is Worth Building
Start by checking whether an existing order management system or connector app supports your channels, warehouse providers and routing rules. A custom hub is worth considering when important gaps remain and the cost of working around them is substantial.
Those gaps might include:
- Channels the connectors do not cover. A marketplace, a wholesale portal or a reseller arrangement that no vendor has built an integration for.
- Routing rules the available tools cannot support. Orders may need to be assigned using a combination of location, stock and shipping cost.
- Unsupported warehouse APIs. Your fulfilment providers may require connections that are missing from the products you have evaluated.
- Order workflows that need extra handling. Check how available tools manage reseller campaigns, bulk orders and partial shipments.
- Significant time spent on workarounds. Recording the hours spent moving data helps you compare the cost of a build with the work it could remove.
Our automation guide explains how to estimate the work a process change could remove. The custom software cost guide provides planning ranges. If the work is mainly in your storefront, see our Shopify development services.
FAQ
Questions about order hubs and channel integration
Common questions about connecting sales channels, warehouse providers and order workflows.
What is a multi-channel order hub?
An order hub collects orders from sales channels, stores them in a standard format and sends them to warehouses for fulfilment. It also receives tracking details and updates the originating channel.
Why not use an off-the-shelf order management system?
An existing product is worth checking first. It may already support your channels and warehouse providers at a lower cost than a custom build.
Custom development becomes an option when the available products leave important gaps, such as an unsupported API or reseller workflow. The decision depends on the cost of those workarounds compared with building and maintaining a hub.
How do you connect a third-party warehouse or 3PL that has its own API?
Each warehouse has an adapter that converts the hub's order data into the fields required by the provider's API. It also converts dispatch confirmations and tracking details back into the hub's format.
This keeps provider-specific changes in the adapter while allowing the warehouse connection to use the existing order workflow.
What happens when a channel or warehouse API fails?
Temporary failures are retried automatically, with longer intervals between attempts. Unresolved order imports, warehouse transfers and stock syncs appear in a dashboard review queue with details of the problem.
Repeated scheduled-job failures trigger an alert to tPanel after a few hours. Staff can use manual uploads for orders and tracking details while the issue is being investigated.
Can an order hub handle partial shipments and split orders?
Yes. The hub records fulfilment status for each order line as well as for the order as a whole.
An order stays partially shipped while items are outstanding. Once all items have been dispatched, the hub updates its status on the originating sales channel.
How much does a custom order hub cost in Australia?
tPanel's planning range for an integration involving several platforms, business rules and exception handling is A$12,000-45,000. A hub with its own dashboard and reseller workflows may cost more. These are general planning figures, not Everau/Tangwealth's project price.
Scope the channels, warehouse APIs, mapping and failure handling first. Include ongoing hosting, maintenance, external service fees and future API changes in the budget. The custom software cost guide explains those cost boundaries.
Talk through your order workflow
Tell us where orders come from, who fulfils them and which steps your team handles by hand. We can discuss what can be connected and where staff still need to make a decision.