Stock availability

Introduction

Fulfillmenttools can act as the central source for stock information. It calculates and provides:

• Stock that is physically present in a facility (Stock on Hand)

• Stock that is available to be sold (Available on Stock)

• Stock that is available to be sold & picked in a store or warehouse (Available for Picking)

• Stock that is expected to arrive based on deliveries of goods, production, transfers from other facilities, etc. (Expected)

Stock information can be:

• queried via api/stocks/summaries or api/stockdistribution

• derived from the InventoryFacilityStockChangedWebHookEvent

• viewed in the Stock Overview in the Backoffice

As an alternative, users can directly consume and operate on stocks, i.e., get all stock entities and calculate the availabilities needed.

Stock on hand (On hand)

Describes stock which is physically located in a facility. Stock that is, for example, still booked to the facility but is already in transit to another facility is not included.

Available on stock (AOS)

Available on stock describes stock which is available for selling (not been earmarked for other purposes). In our platform it refers to stock that is accessible, reduced by:

• stock that is reserved for orders
• safety stock, i.e., stock that is held back for offline sales
• expired stock (if defined)
• stock that has reached its availableUntil value (if defined)

Available for picking (AFP)

Available for picking describes stock which is available (not been earmarked for other purposes), and also ready to be picked. In our platform it refers to all stock that is accessible and pickable, reduced by:

• stock that is reserved for orders
• safety stock, i.e., stock that is held back for offline sales
• expired stock (if defined)
• stock that has reached its availableUntil value (if defined)

Expected stock

Expected stock that is expected to arrive or to be produced. Expected stock can be communicated via the inbound process. After an inboundProcess with a purchaseOrder was created, our systems automatically create expected stock for the requested items. Expected stock is visible in the stock overview in the Backoffice. Once a purchase order was created, its expected stock can be considered in the shop availability.

Creation and management of expected stock

Expected stock is automatically created after a new inbound process with a corresponding purchase order was added. Expected stock can only be managed via the purchase order and cannot directly be edited via API. Quantities, attributes, etc. of expected stock can be edited via the requested items of the purchase order.

Properties and available until on expected stock

Similar to stocks, expected stock can have properties and an availableUntil value. Stock properties can be specified in the requested items of the purchase order. They can be used, for example, to communicate an expiry date for expected goods so that the future inventory availability can already be adapted before the goods were accepted. The availableUntil value is calculated and set automatically if configured in the listing.

Safety stock

Safety stock allows guarding offline sales against online-induced stock-outs. It can be defined on facility level, and decreases the available stock levels ("available for picking" and "available on stock"). This means, if the stock level in a given facility is equal or less than the configured safety stock, the available stock is 0.

Users can configure the desired safety stock quantity for each listing. Configurations can be made in the stock overview in the Backoffice or via safety stocks REST API.

Safety stock is considered in order routing meaning that orders can become unroutable if the available stock is equal to or less than the configured safety stock.