By uploading inventory feeds with accurate stock information, we can further utilize Logicbroker’s capabilities to increase efficiency and strengthen the overall partnership. This document outlines the following:
- Distinction between Inventory vs. Orders
- Time to Ship Commitment
- Available Stock Inventory
- Out of Stock Inventory
- Next Available Date
- Link to Logicbroker Help Center
Inventory vs. Purchase Orders
Inventory and Purchase Orders should be considered two SEPARATE concepts when working in Logicbroker. They work together to help source the right products to the correct suppliers; but for the purpose of this document, it helps to think of these separately.
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Inventory – Inventory files uploaded to Logicbroker help us answer one question - “What is the time to ship expectation we should advertise on our website to Potential Future Customers”. Please review BBQGuys Inventory Guidelines.
- This has nothing to do with existing purchase orders sent to you – it specifically deals with “before the purchase order” situations.
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Purchase Orders – Estimated Ship Dates entered on Logicbroker acknowledgements help us answer a different question altogether – “When will you ship this specific order to this specific customer”. Please review BBQGuys Acknowledgement Guidelines.
- These customers already bought the items, and they will be priority over potential future customers.
Time to Ship Commitment
- Time to Ship = the number of business days it will take from when we send the purchase order to Logicbroker to when you enter the shipment in Logicbroker.
- Once we learn of what time to ship you can comfortably commit to, we will advertise that on our site for those items that show available on your inventory feed
- If you’re comfortable committing to 3 days, we will likely advertise 3-5 business days on site
- Likewise, if it is 2, we may advertise 1-3 business days
- If 5, we may advertise 5-7 business days, etc.
- Your commitment may change throughout the year as circumstances dictate (busy season got you backed up, etc.), and that’s ok… we just need to know what your current commitment is at any given time so we can update the site appropriately and give our customers proper expectations.
- If you’re comfortable committing to 3 days, we will likely advertise 3-5 business days on site
- Enter your Time to Ship commitment in the “Color” field on the inventory feed for each available item
- This field is simply for information sharing and helps you control the times.
- Whenever circumstances change, you will need to change it as soon as possible on your next inventory feed update, we can update our site with the updated information.
- This can be done on an item level. If you carry items that typically ship longer than your standard commitment, that’s ok too. We just need to know your current capabilities.
Available Stock Inventory
- Available Stock = what you have in your warehouse that is available to potential future customers
- Available Stock is different than the total stock in your warehouse.
- If your total stock in your warehouse shows 100, but you have 30 outstanding orders, then the available to stock would be 70.
- For Inventory feeds, we don’t really care what total stock is. We care about what’s available to us for new customers.
Out of Stock Inventory
- Knowing you went from 3000 in available stock to 2999 on a particular item is not super important, because to us it’s still “available” and we can feel good about advertising your standard committed time to ship either way.
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What we MUST know is when you run out of available stock (quantity goes from 1 to 0). At this point, we would immediately know NOT to advertise your standard available stock time to ship
- We still sell items even if out of stock. We do not take them off the site. People are still interested/willing to buy and are ok with an extended time to ship, if we make them aware up front.
- This will cut down on upset customers and time-wasting cancelations.
- While this does tell us to NOT advertise the available stock time to ship, it does not tell us what time to ship we should advertise.
Next Available Date Inventory
- The “Next Available Date” should reflect when you expect to have available stock allowing us to go back to advertising your standard time to ship, meaning this may or may not match the date of your next expected delivery.
- Example: Let’s say we have sent you 100 orders for an item that you have zero stock on, and you’re expecting a delivery of 50 by Jan 15, then another 50 by Jan 22, and then another 50 by Jan 29. If you entered the Next Available Date of Jan 15, you’d be wrong. While you are in fact getting product then, they won’t be “available” because they’re spoken for. It would even be wrong to enter Jan 22. Jan 29 would be the actual next delivery that gets you to an available stock position, though that’s only factoring in orders BBQGuys sent you!
- The Next Available Date field comes in handy to help us set an appropriate time to ship
- If it’s currently Jan 1st, and you enter Jan 21st in the Next Available Date field, we will likely advertise 3-4 weeks instead of standard time to ship.
- If Feb 21st, we might advertise 6-8 weeks
- If Jan 10th, we might advertise 7-10 biz days, etc.
- Once we feel that we can trust your dates here, we might even institute an automatic countdown to help boost sales.
- Start with 6-8 weeks, then drop to 4-6, then 3-4, etc.
- I know what you’re thinking – “many times we don’t know yet when we will have available stock, so how can I enter a date in this field”? Good question, and very common.
- Number one thing is if we know you have zero available now, we at least know to NOT show the available time to ship.
- If you don’t tell us the next available date, we will update our site to a worst-case scenario time to ship – probably 12-16 weeks.
- If we’re going to make something up anyway, and you feel confident you’ll be back available by then, you could just enter a date 12-16 weeks away anyway.
- You can always update this once you learn the more specific date
- Maybe it’s been on backorder, and you’ve been told 2 months, but no specific date. Great, enter 2 months from now!
- Maybe you’ve not been told anything, but you know you typically get shipments within 1 month. Great, enter 1 month from now.
- Maybe you’ve noticed on the last several orders your vendor has been a week or two behind normal and they tell you 1 month. Great, enter 6 weeks from now. And so on…!
- If it’s currently Jan 1st, and you enter Jan 21st in the Next Available Date field, we will likely advertise 3-4 weeks instead of standard time to ship.
Benefits of Uploading Logicbroker Inventory Feeds
While we understand this may seem like more work, we are just asking you to do the same work, but in a different, more efficient way. It will take more time in the beginning, but there are many great benefits to providing us the inventory feeds in Logicbroker. Here’s a list of benefits:
- Saves you time from the back-and-forth questions we email and call about.
- Identifying new items we don’t have on our website.
- Identifying discontinued items.
- Can help increase sales overall by keeping stock communication flowing 100%.
- Allows potential for increased sales for items with a countdown for next available stock.
- Prevents a snowball effect of stock issues with orders and customer expectations down the line.
- Helps reduce cancelations for customers’ orders where items were marked with short time to ship when the order was placed, then finding out the time to ship is longer after the fact.
- Reducing the amount of cancelations improves your overall Vendor Score Card.
- Once we can trust your inventory feeds, we could potentially automate some of the manual processes we do to make this more efficient.
Link to Logicbroker Help Center
How to Upload Inventory Feed: https://bbqguys.logicbroker.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022855612-Inventory-Management