INVENTORY

SendSafe can help manage your inventory in a number of different ways using several different tools.

• Quantity inventory tracking where individual units are not tracked, only quantities of items in stock is tracked.
• Unit Level inventory tracking where individual units are tracked by serial number.

Standard Automatic SendSafe Inventory Adjustments

• When an order is successfully processed and payment approved, the inventory level for each item in the order is decremented for the sale
• If an Item record is locked during order processing then delayed inventory adjustments will occur. These adjustments will occur a short period of time after the item is unlocked or the lock expires.
• When an subscription refill order is queued, the inventory level for the refill and parent items are automatically balanced to maintain an equal number of units in each pool.

Standard Reports

• The Units Report shows how many units have been sold or processed during a specified time frame.
• The Inventory Report shows your current stocking levels.
• Employee Units Worked report can show a daily total for all units.

Inventory Par Levels and Alerts

You can optionally set par levels for items. If the quantity in stock goes below the par level or is predicted to go below the par level when all queued orders complete THEN an email alert is send out. The email will indicate whether this is an actual inventory level alert or a predicted inventory level alert (i.e. a level which will occur shortly). Par levels for an item are set by entering a record into the Inventory Par table in the store config:

• tablename = "Inventory Par Level"
• keyword = sku
• value1 = par level

Quantity Inventory Tracking

This method of tracking is always used. It will allow you know how much of any one item are in stock.

• Tracking occurs in the items table where the the QtyInStock column shows how many are in stock.
• When items are purchased from the store the QtyInStock column in the items table is decremented.
• Use the Inventory Report Admin page will display the levels of each items in stock.

Unit Level Inventory Tracking

This method of tracking is optional. It will allow you to track which units are in stock, sold, and in RMA processing.

• Opening balances must be setup before business begins.
• Inventory balance adjustments must be made as new items are added to the store.
• Use the Sold Admin page to adjust the inventory of a specific item.
• Use the Units Report Admin page to view the disposition of items (including RMA) and manage which inventory bins the items are in.
• Serial numbers are saved in the SerialNumber column of the OrderLineItemExt table.
• Order#0 (transactionId=0) is used as a special case order where inventory opening is setup and ongoing inventory is managed.
• OrderlineItems are setup in Order#0 for each item in stock.
• The Application("RMADispositionOptions") is used to setup inventory bins for both RMA and stock items.
• Opening inventory balances can be imported from a spreadsheet using the OrderLineItem import tool found on the LineItems Admin page.
• Raw Serial numbers for specific units should not be saved into the SerialNumber column for LineItems in the order where it is sold. The serial number in the sold order must be prefaced with the reserved code symbol '#' - This symbol is used to differentiate between opening balance inventory lineitem records and an actual order line item record.

Sold Admin Page

This page is used to mark specific units as sold. The unit is identified by serial number. The unit must have been previously entered into the system either by RMA or an Inventory Balance adjustment.

The item's serial number is entered into this admin page (either via barcode scanner or keyboard). This page will then mark the inventory as sold by moving the inventory to the bin designated by Application("RMASoldInventoryBid").

Units Sold Report Admin Page

This Admin page is used to report on items in inventory bins and move items between inventory bins. The "Report Type" dropdown allows selection between reports. The Units Report at its most basic level shows how many units have been sold or processed during a specified time frame.

1. If you select a report type of SKU, the system will create a report which lists the number of units found for each SKU.
2. If you select a report type of DISPOSITION, the system will create a report which lists the number of units found for each Disposition (Inventory) Bin.
3. If you select a report type of DISPOSITION WITH ASSGINMENT, the system will create a report which lists individual units with Disposition (Inventory) Bin.

Special assignment actions occur for items which have been handled by the RMA system. If an item that was handled by the RMA system is added to the salable bin (a special bid disignated as salable items), then the item is automatically added to a matching items table entry by increasing the QtyInStock by 1. This action is performed by a special RMA Job.

Inventory Report Admin Page

This admin page is used to report the stock levels for each SKU. You can create reports which only show information for SKUs which have stocking levels below, above, or equal to a specific par levels or zero.

Employee Units Worked Report Admin Page

This report is typically combined with a bar code reader and special input pages, and custom reports. It is used to report how many units each employee has processed. If you use a call center, this report can be easily modified to record the employee ID for each call center worker who entered an order for a customer.

This report shows the employee Id entered into the InspectedBy DB column for each lineitem.

Out of Stock Sales Limiting

The optional e-store framework will stop selling a product once the inventory level on that product (QtyInStock) reaches or drops below zero. This sales limiting function can be enabled or disabled for the entire storefront. You have the global options of displaying out of stock messages with or without a buy button.

When a product is out of stock, an out of stock message is displayed and the add to cart button is disabled. The out of stock message is ether the default “Temporarily out of stock” OR the message can be configured to be a unique message on an item by item basis by inserting messages into the OutOfStockMsg column. This message can include hyperlinks to special contact pages or custom images (icons) which you create. Most HTML tags are legal in this field. Test carefully, because an unclosed TAG could mess up an entire buying page!

Product levels can drop below zero before sales limiting starts disabling further sales. This occurs in two ways:

1. The race to the checkout line: If more than one person is purchasing the product at the same time, the sum of their purchased may push the level below zero.
2. The pack rats: If several people have had an item in their cart for hours or days then decided to checkout. The system will allow this order even though the item may already be out of stock.

The above over-sales of items are allowed on the principal that stocking control should have a minimum impact on a customer. Customer will not understand why they could only buy 4 of an item when they tried to add ten to the cart OR they will be upset when an item they added to the cart is no longer available at the time of checkout.

If an item in the cart is out of stock, an out of stock message is displayed in the cart below each affected item (this message is not configurable at this time).

If you require absolute inventory locking then we can customize the SendSafe to perform in this way. It will result in products in a customer's cart disappearing if the inventory level is too low. This could confuse or anger some customers who through they had the product reserved by placing it in their cart. You will need a clear policy statement explaining what can happen to items left in a cart for an extended period of time. We also recommend that you add the display of stock levels on all purchasing pages.