Guide · Walmart Drop Ship Vendor program
Walmart's Drop Ship Vendor (DSV) program is first-party dropship: Walmart sells the item on Walmart.com and pays you a wholesale cost, and you ship each customer order from your own warehouse on the carrier and service Walmart designates. The program runs on hours-based clocks, not days: acknowledge within four hours, ship by the expected ship date, feed inventory every day, and hold rejections, on-time shipment, and defects inside thresholds that are tighter than any marketplace's. This page lists the rules as Walmart enforces them, the operational cause behind most misses, and how an OMS runs them without anyone watching Supplier One.
What DSV is
DSV sits between Walmart's two other ways of selling your product. On Walmart Marketplace you are the seller: you set price, pay a referral fee, and ship on your own account. As a 1P warehouse supplier you sell pallets to Walmart's distribution centers on purchase orders. DSV is the hybrid: Walmart sells the item at a price it sets and pays you wholesale, but the order routes to your warehouse and you ship the parcel to the customer, or to a store for pickup. Walmart owns the customer, the price, and the transportation decision; you own the acknowledgment, the pick, the pack, and the ship date. The DSV vs Marketplace vs 1P guide covers how to choose; this page assumes you are in DSV and need to run it cleanly.
Because Walmart has already promised the customer a delivery date when your PO arrives, every rule below exists to protect that promise, and Walmart's systems measure them automatically. A late order is late because a timestamp says so.
The rules
| Rule | What Walmart expects | Where it bites |
|---|---|---|
| Acknowledge within 4 hours | Every PO acknowledged at the line level within four hours of receipt, through the Line Level Acknowledgement tool, EDI 855, or the DSV API | Nights, weekends, and any integration that polls less often than hourly |
| Ship by Expected Ship Date | Each order dispatched by the ESD on the PO so the customer’s delivery date holds | Pick queues sorted by anything other than ESD; stock in the wrong facility |
| Walmart’s carrier and method | Walmart allocates transportation and the shipping method on every order; you ship on the designated carrier account and service | Re-rating in your shipping tool; using your own account |
| Daily inventory feed | Available quantity for each distribution facility every day; high-volume suppliers feed several times a day | A single daily feed while other channels sell the same units |
| Plain cartons | Simple unlabeled cartons, no packaging labels or marketing inserts | Branded packaging built for DTC |
| Site to Store | Orders routed to a store for pickup ship on a Site to Store label to the store, not the customer | Treating S2S like a home-delivery order |
| Operating cadence | Complete orders Monday through Friday by noon local time; planned closures entered in Supplier Center at least 14 days ahead | Unplanned closures, holidays not posted |
Walmart publishes the current standards in your DSV agreement and in Supplier One; the figures here are the program standards as published and commonly enforced in 2026, and the place to confirm them is your account.
The metrics
| Metric | Standard | How it is measured | What usually breaks it |
|---|---|---|---|
| On-Time Shipment Rate | Above 99% | Orders shipped by their ESD | Batch shipping, weekend gaps, carrier pickup missed |
| Rejection Rate | Below 0.1%, including backorders and discontinued items | Lines you reject or cannot fill against lines received | Inventory feed says available, shelf says otherwise |
| 15-Day Order Defect Rate | Below 2% | Cancellations, returns for defect, customer complaints inside 15 days | Pack errors, wrong item, damage |
The rejection threshold is the one that surprises suppliers coming from marketplaces. One tenth of one percent means one rejected line in a thousand, and backorders count. Since Walmart only sends you orders for units your feed said were available, every rejection is a gap between the feed and the shelf, which is why the daily feed is the floor and near-real-time is the target for anyone also selling the same SKUs elsewhere.
On the wire
| Exchange | EDI | DSV API | Deadline it feeds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purchase order | 850 | Orders: get released orders | Acknowledgment clock starts on receipt |
| Line-level acknowledgment | 855 | Orders: acknowledge | 4 hours |
| Shipment notice with tracking | 856 | Orders: ship (with carrier, method, tracking) | Ship by ESD; tracking Walmart can follow |
| Inventory advice per facility | 846 | Inventory: update by ship node | Daily minimum |
| Invoice | 810 | Invoice per order | Payment on supplier terms |
| Cancellation | 855/870 variants | Orders: cancel with reason | Counts toward rejection rate |
DSV can run on EDI through a VAN or on Walmart's Drop Ship Vendor APIs through an approved Selling Partner app. The rules are identical either way; the API path removes the per-document cost and lets acknowledgments fire from the order pull rather than from a batch cycle.
Root causes
Late acknowledgments come from polling cadence. An integration that checks Supplier One every few hours cannot make a four-hour window on a Friday evening PO, and a person acknowledging from a screen is not there on Saturday. Late shipments come from pick queues that ignore the ESD and from stock sitting in a facility other than the one Walmart routed to, because the inventory feed said it was there. Rejections come from the feed itself: a unit sold on Amazon or your own store an hour before Walmart's PO arrived, with the feed not yet updated. Each has the same shape of fix: run the step as an event off real inventory, not as a batch off a report.
Automation
InfiPlex was Walmart's first approved DSV channel partner solution and connects as an official Walmart Selling Partner App. Orders pull from Supplier One on a short cycle and acknowledge on pull, inside the four-hour window, with email or text alerts per event. Labels print on Walmart's designated carrier and method, including Site to Store labels, and tracking posts to Walmart the moment the label is bought. Inventory feeds per ship node, totaled or one-to-one by warehouse, as every channel sells. Wholesale pricing and third-party shipping set-up are on the wholesale pricing and third-party shipping articles; the program page is the Walmart DSV integration.
Frequently asked
The questions new DSV suppliers ask in their first month.
Within four hours of receiving the purchase order, at the line level, through Supplier One's Line Level Acknowledgement tool, EDI 855, or the DSV API. Nights and weekends count, which is why acknowledgment is normally automated off the order pull.
The date by which Walmart expects the order dispatched so the customer's promised delivery date holds. Shipping after the ESD is a late shipment and, under the DSV standards, carries a per-order fulfillment chargeback.
No. Walmart allocates transportation and the shipping method on every DSV order, and you ship on Walmart's designated carrier account and service. Re-rating to a cheaper service on your own account is a compliance violation, not a saving.
Above 99% of orders shipped by their Expected Ship Date, alongside a rejection rate below 0.1% and a 15-day order defect rate below 2%.
Yes. Backorders and discontinued items count toward the rejection rate, which Walmart expects to stay below 0.1%. Keeping the inventory feed ahead of the shelf is the only durable way to hold that line.
At least once a day, for each distribution facility, and Walmart recommends several feeds a day for higher volume. Suppliers who sell the same SKUs on other channels feed continuously so Walmart never routes an order to a unit already sold.
An order the customer chose to pick up at a Walmart store. You ship it to the store on a Site to Store label rather than to the customer's address, and the label and routing differ from a home-delivery order.
Yes. Walmart's Drop Ship Vendor APIs cover orders, acknowledgments, shipments, inventory, and invoices through approved Selling Partner apps, with the same rules as EDI and no per-document cost.
By pulling orders from Supplier One on a short cycle and acknowledging on pull, around the clock, with alerts per event. Labels print on Walmart's designated carrier, tracking posts when the label is bought, and inventory feeds per ship node as every channel sells.
Resources
Orders pulled and acknowledged around the clock, Walmart’s labels including Site to Store, tracking at label purchase, inventory per ship node. Live in 1–3 business days.
We connect Walmart DSV accounts every week, and were Walmart's first approved DSV channel partner. Bring your order volume and your current tooling and we will map which clocks are slipping. Contact us, email info@infiplex.com, or call 888‑770‑0857.
InfiPlex™ is a trademark of InfiPlex. Walmart, Walmart Marketplace, Supplier One, Retail Link, and Walmart Fulfillment Services are trademarks of Walmart Apollo, LLC. InfiPlex is an independent integration provider and is not endorsed by or affiliated with Walmart. Program rules, deadlines, and chargeback amounts are set by Walmart and change; verify current terms in your supplier agreement and Supplier One before relying on them. ©2026 InfiPlex. All rights reserved.
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