Facilities overview
A facility is a fulfillment location in the network. A facility could be a store, warehouse, dark store, and so on.
Upon opening Facilities in the sidebar, you'll see a table of all the facilities that have been created in your network. To create a new facility, click the Add facility button at the bottom of the table, input the required information, and click Save.
To view details for an existing facility, click the facility anywhere in the table row to open the details screen.
You can manage facility data and configurations for each facility, such as fulfillment times or available shipping providers (carriers). These configurations can influence the routing decision and the data displayed in the Store Operations app and Backoffice.
Facility data
Facility data contains the main information about a facility. This includes the name, address, contact information, and certain characteristics. All of this can be edited using Backoffice. Once you've made any changes, ensure you click the Save button for them to take effect.
Facility name
A facility has both an external name and an internal name. The external name is used, for example, as the sender address on a shipping label and should feature the company name itself. The internal name can be used within your team to differentiate between different facilities.
Both internal and external names can be edited freely at any time. The mapping between orders, facilities, and so on occurs in the background using unique IDs, so names are used solely for display.
Facility address
The facility address is the country, street, ZIP code, and city. This also includes the geo-coordinates of the facility's location.
Facility contact information
You can add a specific person to contact for a facility. This is usually the facility manager. You can also add phone numbers and email addresses.
Facility location characteristics
There are 4 location characteristics:
Location type
A facility can be one of three types:
Store
Warehouse
External (usually a supplier)
You can use the dropdown to change the type if needed.
Facility status
A facility can have one of three statuses with different implications for views and routing:
Online
The facility and its stock are considered for order routing
The facility is accessible in Backoffice
Suspended
The facility and its stock are not considered for order routing
The facility is accessible in Backoffice
Offline
The facility and its stock are not considered for order routing
The facility is not accessible in Backoffice
If a facility is no longer used for order fulfillment, it's recommended to set its status to Suspended. As a consequence, no new orders are assigned to this facility. After all operational processes have been completed (and no more returns are expected for this facility), the facility can be set to Offline. This should be done only if there is no longer any need to access the facility from an operational perspective.
Service type
A facility can have the service type of Shipping, Pickup, or both. The service type affects the routing decision and the views and settings in the Store Operations app.
Pickup (click-and-collect)
The click-and-collect handover section is shown.
Facilities aren't considered in routing decisions, as the facility the customer wants to pick up the order from is already determined in the web shop.
Shipping (ship-from-store)
The label section is shown.
The ship-from-store handover section is shown.
A switch offering to order a label or pick another task when reaching the end of picking is shown.
Only facilities with the shipping type are considered in the routing decision in a ship-from-store order.
Facility tags
If tags have been created, these are available in the dropdown to add to the facility.
Fulfillment times and capacity
Fulfillment times are the days and times on which fulfillment is performed for a facility. They might not match a facility's opening times. Fulfillment times can be configured individually for each day.
Fulfillment times are considered within fulfillmenttools, for example, when a target time is generated or when a time-triggered reroute takes place.
The fulfillment capacity can be defined for each time slot within the facility settings. It reflects the number of orders, and therefore pick jobs, that can be fulfilled in the time slot. When an order is routed to a facility with capacity information, the facility's capacity is reduced by the order's quantity for the next available capacity slot. To ensure that fulfillment capacities are considered in routing, the capacity fence or rating must be activated.
For more information on how the target time of an order is calculated considering capacities, see the Order target time calculation section.
Non-fulfillment days
Non-fulfillment days are days on which no fulfillment occurs, such as public holidays. You can set a specific date that occurs only once, or set an annual recurrence.
To add a new non-fulfillment day, click the Add day button. Use the X button to delete an existing non-fulfillment day.
Average fulfillment duration
Average fulfillment duration is the lead time or buffer time required for an order to be ready for handover to the shipping provider or the consumer. This corresponds to the time from the creation of the pick job to the completion of the handover. It's used in fulfillmenttools to calculate whether successful order completion can be ensured at a facility.
Carrier
You can assign different carriers to a facility. With this information, a fence can be implemented where orders that need to be shipped by a chosen carrier are routed to a facility where this carrier is active. Carriers enabled at the tenant-level must also be enabled for the facilities where the carrier is available.
Pickup times can be configured for each carrier at each facility using the more icon. This time represents when a carrier usually comes to the facility to collect parcels for shipping. This is also known as the cutoff time.
Short pick
A short pick describes a case where an order could not be fully picked. This can happen when some ordered items are too low in stock or out of stock. By enabling this configuration, stock for an item in a facility is set to zero if nothing or not enough can be picked for that item.
It's strongly recommended to activate the confirmationOnShortPick in the picking configuration simultaneously. Otherwise, fulfillmenttools can't differentiate between cases where the user tried to pick an item and failed due to no stock available, and cases where the pick job was rerouted before the user tried to pick all ordered items.
Storage principles
Storage principles for stock properties (such as best-before date) can be defined for each facility. The unmixed storage principle means that items with different properties (for example, best-before dates) must not be stored in the same storage location.
Enabling unmixed storage has the following effects:
If a user tries to stow the same items with different properties in the same storage location, a user prompt is shown.
For storage location recommendations, only locations that meet the unmixed storage principle are shown.
The unmixed storage configuration should be deactivated if stock properties aren't relevant while stowing or relocating items.
Discounts
Facility discounts determine the value by which the sales price of the facility's listings is reduced for a specific group. It's configured on the facility that supplies the listing to other facilities. Discounts can be defined for a facility, a group of facilities, or a group of articles (category).
In Backoffice, you can only view existing facility discounts. To create a new discount, it needs to be done via the API.
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