Overview
As a sourcing agent and fulfillment center, CSA has been acting on behalf clients to source tens of thousands of different products from China since 1999. Most of CSA’s clients are dropship or import in bulk from China.
If you are an online business owner who runs one or more online stores, especially if you are a Dropshiper, you will find that CSA offers much more than what other sources provide to you.
Advantages of using CSA include:
- Tens of thousands of products available. All products that we have sourced for clients are listed on the Online Catalogue. You may also submit a Custom Sourcing Request if you can’t find your desired product(s) there. We handle thousands of custom sourcing request each month.
- An average minimum 5% lower prices than the prices available on other platforms, including AliExpress. CSA is called AliExpress Terminator by some clients.
- Great money & time saver for Dropshipers. No need for fulfillment Virtual Assistants any more, saving you Min $1000 per VA per month. You may connect your stores to CSA’s ERP app for automatic fulfillment, as well as having a CSA Agent to help you solve all kinds of fulfillment issues. No more hundreds of hours on sourcing products, on dealing with different suppliers, or on orders and shipping arrangements etc.. CSA Agents will completely handle them for you. You will have much more time than ever before to focus on your core business, such as marketing.
Traditional bulk importing clients also find CSA much helpful as CSA usually helps them to find more reliable suppliers and to negotiate lower prices, as well as better shipping arrangements etc..
Accounts & Subaccounts
Accounts
After signing up, a notification will be sent to your E-mail for the purpose of the verification of your E-mail. Once you verify your E-mail, your CSA Account will be created. With the CSA Account, you may use of all the features on CSA for a customer, e.g. viewing prices, viewing/placing orders, creating subaccounts, topping up Wallet etc.
Membership
Once your CSA Account has been created, usually you will be automatically signed up as a free CSA Member as well. To verify this, you may go to the Members Area to check if you have been signed up as a member already – if not, you may sign up your free membership or upgrade to paid membership directly in the Members Area.
Being a member, you may use all the features specially for a CSA Member, including but not limited to:
- Connecting your dropshipping store to our ERP App for our Agents to take care of the orders of your stores for you, replacing your regular store managing VA without any extra charges to you, which worth Min $1000 per VA per month.
- Sourcing products for you according to your custom product sourcing request.
- Importing products onto your online stores for you based on your request.
- and so many more…such as virtual assistance service for custom/white label products sourcing, website building and online marketing service etc. at competitive rates.
Subaccounts
If you have employees/team mates, you may want your employees/team mates to have access to your account, to see prices, to place orders, to communicate, etc. on behalf of you. You may use the Subaccount feature in such cases.
A subaccount is an individual account with its own username and password. As the Main Account owner, you can create, edit and delete subaccounts. A subaccount has permissions, including: permission to place orders, to view orders, purchase lists, etc.
- You can go to My Account -> Subaccounts to add a new Subaccount, to edit and/or delete a Subaccount.
- To create a Subaccount, you must choose login details (username, email, password), personal details of the account user, and set what permissions the account has.
- If the View all account orders/purchase list is enabled, the Subaccount can view all the orders/purchase list of the Main Account, otherwise, the Subaccount can view the orders/purchase list created by himself only.
- If the Main Account enables the “Place an Order” to a Subaccount and also the “Order requires approval” option, the Subaccount can place orders for the Main Account with the payment method of “Submit for Company Approval” only.
- If the Main Account grants the permission of “Place an Order” to a Subaccount and does not enable the “Order requires approval” option, the Subaccount can place orders for the Main Account with the payment methods of “Quotation Request” and “Bank Transfer“, and then the Subaccount may notify the Main Account about it after the order has been placed. The Main Account can make bank transfer payment for the order later. Sometimes Paypal may also be listed as a payment method in the above case, if the order amount does not exceed the "Maximum Accepted Paypal Amount". If the Subaccount holder has been authorized by the Main Account to make Paypal payments (e.g. having the Main Account’s Paypal credentials with authorization), the Subaccount may make Paypal payments on behalf of the Main Account. However, due to security concerns and to avoid unauthorized payments, a Subaccount is not able to use Main Account’s Wallet balance to make payments.
- If the Main Account grants the permission of “Place an Order” to a Subaccount and does not enable the “Order requires approval” option, but the Subaccount still wants to submit the items to be purchased for the Main Account’s review, then alternatively, a Subaccount can add products to cart and save them as a Purchase List for the Main Account and then notify the Main Account. In such case, the Main Account can log into his own account, check the Purchase List, add the items in the Purchase List to Cart (which will be just a couple of clicks), and then make payment accordingly.
- If your colleague already has an account (which is not a subaccount) and both of you want to change his account into a subaccount, then both of you can submit a support ticket or message us via the chat icon on the buttom right to ask for such change. After verification, we will help you with the change.
Prices
You are not able to view the prices before you have logged in. CSA always tries its best to offer the best prices to its clients. Since there are tens of thousands of products with prices that may flutuate from time to time, CSA mainly offers the products on a quotation basis.
- If you see a product is priced at $0, the price is a place holder only. If you are interested in such products on our Online Catalog, you may request quotation for it.
- Once a quotation has been made regarding any product, that product will be listed in a category exclusively created for you (“Exclusive Category“) with the quoted price. This Exclusive Category and the products in it (“Exclusive Products“) can only be seen by you (after logging in). You may place purchase orders for Exclusive Products and make payments for them directly.
- If you can’t find the products that you want to get quotes of on our Online Catalog, you may submit a Custom Sourcing Request. Our quotes will usually be minimum 5% lower than you can find in the market under the same conditions (same quality, quantity and similar shipping time).
- If a product price is not $0, it is a firm price. You may place purchase orders and make payments for them directly. Please note that if there are both $0 products and non $0 products in your Cart, you may still make payments for the order, in which case you will get fulfillment of the non $0 products and quotations for the $0 products.
Quotation Request
CSA always tries its best to offer the best prices to its clients. Since there are tens of thousands of products with prices that may flutuate from time to time, CSA mainly offers the prices on a quotation basis.
The quotations will usually include shipping cost based on the product, the quantity and the shipping destination etc..Therefore, it will be helpful for you to provide details as much as possible when requesting quotation.
Quotation Request for Products on the Online Catalog
If you are interested in any products on the Online Catalog, you may put the products with the order quantity or estimated order quantity in the shopping cart, go forward to the Checkout page, input necessary notes (e.g. your business model, target markets, requests on quality, daily sales quantity of your dropshipping store and so on), and then choose the payment method of Quotation Request to complete the checkout process.
In this case, CSA will reply to you with detailed quotations as soon as possible by:
- Listing the quoted products in your Exclusive Category for you to place orders directly, and notify you via the Order Support portal under that specific order; or
- sending you a detailed quoation via the Order Support portal under that specific order.
Custom Sourcing Request
If you cannot find your desired products on the Online Catalog, or, if you have already have targeted products in mind and do not want to spend time on looking for them on our Online Catalog, you may submit a Custom Sourcing Request from the Members Area.
Payment Methods
There are several payment methods available:
Wallet
Wallet payment is one of the most welcome payment methods. Most of our clients love to use the Wallet.
Wallet is a virtual wallet that you may deposit your funds in advance, so that you can use the Wallet balance to pay your orders any time, without needing to wait for your payment arriving to our account (it may take a couple of days for the arrival of Bank Transfer payments from some countries). Wallet is super useful for speeding up the fulfillment process, and therefore is most welcome by veterans of dropshipping business who attach the most importance to customer satisfaction. Besides shortening the time for payment, using Wallet will help you avoid unexpected accidents in payments. For example, your payment collection portal may temporarily freeze your account (e.g. if there are too many customer complaints of shipment delay) – in such case, having enough balance in your Wallet will help you though the hard time of account being temporarily frozen.
As long as there’s enough ballance in your wallet, you may use the balance directly for your orders. What’s more, if you are a CSA Member and have connected your online stores with our ERP application, we will, with your advance authorization, fulfill your new orders once they are received by spending your Wallet balance. As you can see from the above, the Wallet and enough Wallet balance is much important for the seamless operation of your dropship business.
In sum, Wallet is your best weapon to keep customers satisfaction and keep operation smooth. You may always top up your Wallet, transfer your Wallet balance or check your Wallet transaction history here.
Bank Transfer
Bank Transfer is also the major payment method to make payments and top up your Wallet. After you choose the Bank Transfer in the Checkout page and click the “Place Order” button, you will receive a message containing a URL to the list of CSA accounts to which you may make the bank transfer payment.
If you have a Payoneer or Paypal account, you may also make the payment manually from your Payoneer/Paypal account to CSA’s Payoneer/Paypal account, which will be free of charge by Payoneer/Paypal if you follow CSA’s instructions when making such payment. Based on that, they are categorized under Bank Transfer payment method as well.
Please make sure your bank transfer payment is made to an account listed on the official bank account information page only. An official page of CSA will have its URL starting with “https://chinesesourcingagent.com“.
Once you place an order on CSA, a new Order Support Ticket will be automatically created for that order, via which you may sumbit any payment proof, shipping information or requests for any assistance.
Quotation Request
Quotation Request is a virtual payment method indicating that you are requesting quotation only, not making a real payment.
If you place an order by choosing the payment method of “Quotation Request”, CSA will receive the order indicating the payment method as “Quotation Request”. Quotation with details will be sent to you as soon as possible.
Paypal
You may choose “Paypal” as the payment method to pay via Paypal from your Paypal account, your debit card or credit card at the Checkout page.
There will be an extra 5% payment portal fee if you choose Paypal as payment method on the Checkout page. To avoid the payment portal fee, a better alternative is to choose the Bank Transfer payment method to pay directly from your Paypal account to our Paypal account, by choosing the “pay to a friend” when making the Paypal payment.
For risk control purpose, there is a maximum order amount to be paid via Paypal directly on the Checkout page (“Maximum Accepted Paypal Amount“), which is US$500 currently and may be adjusted by CSA from time to time at its own discretion. If you want to make payments over US$500 via Paypal, please choose the Bank Transfer payment method, find our Paypal account details from the Bank Transfer Instructions received after placing the order, and pay from your Paypal account via the “Pay to a friend” portal on Paypal’s admin panel, and then submit relevant information via the order support ticket of that order.
Submit for Company Approval
This is a special payment method for Subaccounts. When creating and/or configuring a Subaccount, the Main Account may configure to allow the Subaccount to “Place an Order”; and when doing so, there will be an additional account to choose whether “Order requires approval”. If the Main Account enables the “Order requires approval” option, the Subaccount will have the “Submit for Company Approval” as the only one payment method when it places orders on behalf of the Main Account.
Shipping Methods
CSA works with many couriers and shipping companies. CSA can help you ship with different couriers and shipping companies based on your requests on shipping time and costs etc.. However, to avoid providing excessive information, our quotation will usually include the cost of the shipping method based on the communications with you, and you will see only one shipping method: Shipping Inclusive, which means:
- If you are a non-inventory dropshipper (you do not store goods in our warehouses and we will order inventory for you or use our inventory to dropship for you), the prices we quoted will usually include the shipping costs based on the communication with you regarding the destination countries and reasonable shipping time etc..
- If you are an inventory dropshipper (you store your goods in our warehouses and we will dropship the goods for you immediately after you receive orders from your customers) or bulk importer, the prices you paid for the stocks may not include the shipping costs (here, “Shipping Inclusive” means “Shipping has not been paid yet”). You may pay the shipping costs after it has been finalized based on the shipping addresses and desired shipping time etc.
Order Support
There is a “Support” button under each order in your Order List.
You will get to the Support Ticket area of that order by clicking a support button of an order.
In case you forget this super useful feature of order support tickets, once you place an order on CSA, a new Order Support Ticket will be automatically created for that order, via which you may sumbit any payment proof, shipping information or requests for any assistance.
In addtion to the automatically created Order Support Ticket, you may create unlimited new order support tickets under any CSA order as well, which is super useful. For example, if you are a dropshiper, you have connected your store to our ERP app and you place an order on CSA to fulfill multiple orders on your store; two of such orders of your store require after service, then, you may create two Order Support Tickets under that CSA order, using each order# of your store (we will have information of the order# of your store too after the ERP connection) to be the Subjects of the Order Support Tickets respectively, so that in future ticket communications, both you and we can know clearly which order of your store is being discussed.
Fulfillment
CSA fulfills 10K+ orders per day for dropshipping clients.
- If you are a non-inventory dropshipper (you do not store goods in our warehouses and we will use our inventory to dropship for you), we will use our own inventory or place orders for inventory to suppliers for you within 1 business day after we have received your payment. If we have inventory to dropship for you, your shipments will be shipped out within 1 business day after we have received your payment, except for super busy seasons, e.g. for Black Friday holidays. If we have to place orders for inventory to suppliers for you, considering the shipping time from the suppliers to our warehouses, the processing time may take up to 5 days after we have received your payment.
- If you are an inventory dropshipper (you store your products in our warehouses and we dropship the goods for you immediately after you receive orders from your customers), then in most cases, the processing time will be 1 business day after we have received your order provided that the shipping cost has been paid already, or 1 business day after we have received your payment of the shipping cost if the shipping cost has not been paid when we receive your order.
- If you are a bulk inventory importer, we will contact you for discussion within 1 business day after we have received your quotation request.
Quick Order
There might be many items in one order. To save time, you might want to collect the information of all the items in your order in one spreadsheet when placing your order. Sometimes, you may also need to re-order some products repeatedly from time to time, especially for your best selling products. There are several ways that you can use to expediate your ordering process:
Quick Order via CSV sheet
You may add products to the cart quickly by importing a CSV sheet with product SKU and product quantity. This is the quickest way to add products to cart if there are quite a few products that you want to buy at the same time.You may order quickly by importing CSV sheet here.
Please note that you are not able to the choose product branding options if you order in this way.
Search & Bulk Order
You may search any product via the search bar and add the product to the cart.As an alternative, you may also search and bulk order the products via the My Account -> Bulk Order menu, where you can search by product name or SKU and then add the products to the cart in bulk. You may also do it here. Please note that you are not able to the choose the product branding options if you order in this way.
Purchase List
You may have used Wishlist before, where you can put items in the Wishlist first and then go back to buy that items later. Traditionally, if we add an item in a Wishlist to cart from the Wishlist, the item will be moved from the Wishlist to the cart and is no longer listed in the Wishlist.Purchase List is similar to Wishlist, where you can add and save items (and quantity thereof) to the Purchase List and then add such items to the cart to purchase later. However, it’s more than Wishlist as its main purpose is for your convenient re-ordering.You may open a Purchase List and add the items in the Purchase List to the cart. The Purchase List will keep unchanged even if you add the items in the Purchase List to the cart. With the Purchase List, you can add the same items to the cart unlimited times, which will make it easier for your re-ordering.You may create multiple Purchase Lists for your convinience. Take a look at the below picture.
To create a Purchase List, you may add products to the cart, and then click the button of “Save as purchase list” on the Cart page to save all the items in the cart as a Purchase List. You may also create a Purchase List directly at My Account -> Purchase Lists.*Please note that you are not able to the choose product branding options if you order in this way.
“Order Again”
If the status of an order is “Complete”, an “Order Again” button for each individual completed order will show up in the Order List, as well as in the details page of that order. By clicking the “Order Again” button, an order with exactly the same products and quantities will be generated in the Cart, including any product branding options that you may have chosen in the original order. You may edit the items/quantities in the cart and place the new order accordingly.
Branding
Many clients like to brand their products. As a Chinese Sourcing Agent, we help clients to do that as well.
In most cases, your branding needs are simple ones. For example, you may only need to stick a logo or barcode sticker, or you may only need a custom printed box/tape for packing, etc. In such cases, you may add special notes in your quotation request, or choose the branding options when you place an order.
On the details page of each products in the Exclusive Category, you will see an option asking if you want to brand this product.
If you choose it, there will be more fields to fill in / select for the branding. The prices of such branding options are calculated automatically, which means that you may select the options directly when you are placing a Purchase Order. The order amount will be calculated and accumulated automatically.
Please note that such branding option in the details page of each products in the Exclusive Category is for the specific product only, which means the logo sticker or the barcode sticker etc. you choose here will be used on that product only, one sticker for one product. If you have more than one product in the same parcel, and you want to brand the whole package, you will need to use the Package Branding Service.
Currency
CSA accepts multiple currencies. USD is set as default currency. There’s a currency switching widget for your reference of the amount in other currencies. Take a look at this article to understand how to calculate the amount if you want to make non-USD payments.
More Helps
We hope the above has given you a detailed idea of how it works when using our services. You may find more useful articles in the Support Center or in the FAQs section.
If you need any further help, please feel free to let us know by submitting a general support ticket or an order support ticket, or contact a CSA Agent via the chat icon on the bottom right. We will be very happy to help.