Demand-based replenishment

Some businesses replenish stock at fixed intervals or produce goods on demand. In both cases, it's often necessary to accept customer orders before the purchase order is placed or the production schedule is defined. This page describes how to configure fulfillmenttools to accept orders without being limited by current stock levels in these scenarios.

An alternative approach is to configure the out-of-stock behavior using the restockable property. For more information, see the Out of stock behavior and configuration article.

The described use case is mapped by creating purchase orders with a very high amount of products and allowing shop systems to access the thereby created expected stock.

If you know the stock quantites, follow the steps in the Expected stock in availiability article.

1

Create listings for products that should be available in large quantities

In most set-ups, listings should already be created for all products that are managed via fulfillmenttools' systems. Still, make sure that a listing exists for each relevant product. If goods are perishable and/or should only be available for a certain time frame, stock properties and/or stockAvailableUntil must be configured.

Endpoint

PUT https://{your-tenant-name}.api.fulfillmenttools.com/api/facilities/{facilityId}/listings

Request

2

Create a purchase order

A purchase order needs to be created and include all items that have not been ordered yet but should be already available for sale and not be limited by current stock levels.

• Choose a high number for the quantity.value of requestedItems

• Define the date when the delivery is expected to arrive in requestedDate.value and set requestedDate.type to TIMEPOINT

• Include as many items as possible in one purchase order rather than creating one purchase order for each item for that a very high stock should be assumed

Each purchase order is limited to 200 tenantArticleIds.

Endpoint

PUT https://{your-tenant-name}.api.fulfillmenttools.com/api/inboundprocesses/{inboundProcessId}/purchaseorder

Request example

3

Enable shop systems to communicate expected stock in sales availability

Use one of the below endpoints to query stock availability in your shop's detail pages and in the checkout journey. By that, it's ensured that expected stock is considered in the shop availability.

See the Availability and Promising section for more information on the checkout options endpoints.

Before using the delivery/earliest REST API and delivery/timeperiod REST API endpoints, the transit time in the carrier country service mapping for the requested carrier(s) must be configured.

4

Create a new purchase order

You only need to do this if the quantity delivered is less than the reserved stock.

Create another new purchase order with large quantities, like you did in step 2. This ensures that the systems can continue to accept customer orders that should be fulfilled within next production or replenishment cycle.

5

Patch purchase order with actual quantity

Once the purchase order was placed or the production schedule was defined, patch requested items in the purchase order with quantities that were actually ordered or planned to be produced. Adjust stock properties such as expiry date if necessary.

If there are more reservations than (expected) stock for reasons such as problems during production or defective items in a delivery, our systems try to distribute these abandoned reservations to other stock. If no alternative stock is available, the reservation is still tracked and will be shifted to a stock as soon as some stock becomes available.

Endpoint

PATCH https://{your-tenant-name}.api.fulfillmenttools.com/api/purchaseorders/{purchaseOrderId}

Request example

6

Create stock after delivery has arrived or products are produced

If the ordered products have arrived or production has been completed, a receipt needs to be added to the purchase order's inbound process to create stock.

If you're not sure about which inbound process the purchase order belongs to, use the purchase order REST API endpoint to query the inboundProcessRef.

Endpoint

POST https://{your-tenant-name}.api.fulfillmenttools.com/api/inboundprocesses/{inboundProcessId}/receipts

Request example