Understanding JD.com Order Fulfillment, Order Splitting, and Amount Allocation Systems

Using JD.com as an example, the article details the order fulfillment and order splitting systems along with related processes.

1. Order Fulfillment Overview

Order fulfillment covers the entire lifecycle of a transaction, from order creation to completion, including invoicing, shipping fees, delivery time windows, appointments, and discounts, which together form the contract between the consumer and the platform.

JD.com’s Order Fulfillment Center (OFC) connects the user’s order with warehouse production, ensuring timely delivery.

What is “211”? Orders placed before 11 am are delivered before 11 pm the same day; orders placed after 11 pm are delivered before 11 am the next day. JD.com also offers next‑day, next‑day‑plus, and “411” (3‑hour) ultra‑fast delivery.

What is an appointment? Customers can select delivery time slots within a 7‑day window, with multiple slots per day and night‑time delivery in some cities.

When does OFC intervene? The OFC process starts when a user submits an order and ends when the order is assigned to a specific warehouse (out of roughly 200 JD warehouses).

In the purchase flow, OFC sits between the ordering step and warehouse production.

2. Order Splitting

What is order splitting? When items in a single order belong to different warehouses or merchants, JD.com splits the order into multiple sub‑orders for separate delivery.

Orders are classified as virtual (e.g., digital codes, gift cards) or physical (tangible goods requiring logistics). Virtual orders bypass the splitting engine.

Splitting Engine Dimensions

1) Warehouse: Different product categories (e.g., appliances, books, IT, food‑infant) have specialized warehouses (temperature‑controlled, large‑item storage, etc.).

2) Merchant: JD’s self‑operated and POP merchants are separated; a single order cannot contain items from multiple merchants.

3) Payment Method: Pre‑payment orders are split after payment, while post‑payment orders are split immediately after order submission.

Additional dimensions and rules also apply.

3. Amount Splitting

Discounts, coupons, freight, and virtual assets (e.g., JD beans) are allocated to each SKU based on its monetary proportion, rounding to the nearest integer.

For example, 1,000 JD beans used to offset ¥10 are distributed across the SKUs proportionally.

Freight charges for remote areas or merchant‑specific shipping are also split using the same principle.

External Services

Amount includes freight, discounts, cash, and actual payment.

Allocation follows SKU‑level proportion with integer rounding.

After splitting, results are sent to MQ; the amount‑splitting system consumes the message, stores results in the DB, and publishes them back to MQ.

The service is consumed by over 30 downstream systems such as after‑sales, invoicing, advertising, procurement, customer service, data warehouse, and billing.