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BBQGuys Inventory vs Orders

Logicbroker
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By uploading inventory feeds with accurate stock information, we can further utilize Logicbroker’s capabilities to increase our efficiency and strengthen our 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
  • Discontinued Inventory
  • How Often to Upload Inventory
  • Required Fields of Inventory
  • Link to Logicbroker Help Center
  • Contacts

 

Inventory vs. Orders

Inventory and 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.

  • Inventory – Inventory feeds uploaded to Logicbroker help us answer one question, and one question only - “What is the time to ship expectation we should advertise on our website to Potential Future Customers”
    • This has nothing to do with existing orders we’ve sent you – it specifically deals with “before the order” situations
  • 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”
    • These customers already bought the products 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 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
  • 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 could change it there on your next inventory feed update, and if we know we can count on it there, we can update our site quickly
    • 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.

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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.
  • 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, as long as 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 we’ve 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…!

 

Discontinued Inventory

  • It’s important to know that Logicbroker keeps a record of every item that has ever been uploaded to Inventory. Simply removing a discontinued item from your new inventory upload, doesn’t exactly tell us that it is discontinued since we can still see that item. Should an item become discontinued, please enter “DISC” in the Next Available Date field. If you still have stock on this item, please make sure your Qty is correct as we will review that prior to removing the item completely from our site. 

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    • All discontinued models must be sent to ETA@BBQGuys.comso the products can be removed from the BBQGuys site.
    • By proactively updating your inventory feed whenever an item is discontinued will help to ensure you don't receive orders for items that are discontinued and unavailable.

 

How Often to Upload Inventory

  • Inventory feeds should be uploaded when:
    • An item’s available stock quantity falls to 0 and the Time to Ship needs to be updated.
    • An item is discontinued and needs to be removed from our site.
    • Increase/decrease in volume of orders has impacted business and the Time to Ship we advertise needs to be adjusted.
  • When uploading files, make sure to include all items in inventory - not just the items that changed.

 

Required Fields on Inventory Feed

  • Supplier Sku - Model Number
  • UPC
  • Quantity
  • Cost - Our dealer cost
  • Supplier Description - Brief description of item
  • Next Available Date - Only for backordered items; the date you expect to have available stock, allowing us to advertise your standard Time to Ship
  • Color - Your current Time to Ship commitment. While this is not technically required, it is incredibly helpful to include and will eliminate back and forth emails.

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Benefits of Uploading Logicbroker Inventory Feeds

While we understand this may seem like more work, we are really just asking you to do the same work we’ve always asked, 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. We are in no way trying to cause more work for you; in fact, we are trying to remove all the extra tedious things that could be avoided by utilizing Logicbroker. If you think about it, we’ve always asked for inventory files in the past, this is just providing a different perspective that will save more time and make the process efficient. 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 are able to 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

 

Contacts

Should you have any questions about any part of Logicbroker, please reach out directly to us at our contacts below. We are happy to help you.

 

BBQGuys Contacts:

 

Logicbroker Support:

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