Introduction

Channergy has a powerful order feature that automatically selects a product from the best location. It allows you to assign warehouse locations and drop shippers based on a priority (1 being the highest priority) and the quantity in stock at each location.

Briefly, the process involves the following steps.

1. Creating Locations.
2. Assigning locations, priorities and drop ship status to each product.

Creating Warehouse Locations

To create your locations open the inventory screen and select “Locations…” from the text menu.

This will open up the Locations (Warehouses) screen.

You can add your warehouse locations by simply clicking on the Add button and keying in a description of the location as is the case above for the Warehouses. To add a drop ship location, see the next section below.

Creating Drop Shipper Locations

Creating drop shipper locations is very similar to what you do for warehouse locations with the exception of the description.

Open the supplier screen and select the supplier that you want to create a drop ship location for.

Select the company field and copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl-C) (e.g., “Wholesale Cell Phone Co.”)

Open the Locations screen and click on the Add button and paste the company name from the clipboard into the Description field.

Assigning Multiple Locations to Products

To assign multiple locations to your product follow these steps.

1. Open the Inventory (Products) screen and search for the product that you want to assign multiple locations to.
2. Select the Stock Levels tab.
3. Check the Multiple Locations check box.
4. Click on the Locations… button.  This will open the Locations for Product screen. Use the pulldown arrow to select a location you created then tab across and enter an In Stock quantity and Preference number. Note: For Drop Shippers you can select Non Inventory (if you do not know your drop shipper’s quantities) and the Drop Ship checkbox.In the example above we added a second line for a drop shipper (how to do that follows below). Note the following:
   1. Warehouse 1 has a preference of 1 that means any orders for this product will be assigned to this location unless the In Stock quantity is zero (which is the case in this example).
   2. Cell Phones Etc has a preference of 2, meaning that if preference 1 has zero quantity In Stock, then the inventory will be pulled from this location
      1. This is a drop ship location and it is also checked as a Non Inventory product which means it has an unlimited (because it is unknown) supply.
      2. If an order was made for this product, it will be assigned to Cell Phones Etc with a status of DCM (Drop Ship Committed)
5. To continue adding locations click on the Add button and select your location from the combo box.
6. As above, assign a preference to this location.
7. Check the Drop Ship box if this is a drop shipper.
8. If you do not get a data feed from the drop shipper that updates their stock quantities, then check the Non Inventory box as well. In the example above note that Wholesale Cell Phone Co-location will never be selected for this product because it has a lower preference than Cell Phones Etc, and the Cell Phones Etc, location is a non-inventory drop shipper.
9. Click the X in the corner of the window to close the dialog. Note that the In Stock quantity is updated to show the Total of the In Stock quantities you entered.

Power Tips

In addition to the above you can also mark a location as “Not Available for Sale”. This is useful if you want to stage inventory for example and then move it into a salable location later.

Lot numbers and expiration dates can be entered here or during Receive Inventory, which is a more efficient method. The Lot # will be tracked at the order level so you can recall items if necessary. Expiration dates can be used with reports to discard or “Fire Sale” items that are expiring soon.

The above process shows the manual setup for a single product. You can make changes to multiple products at once using our Scripting tool. In addition to simply updating locations you can use scripts to intelligently update data on an ongoing basis. For example, if one drop shipper starts offering you a lower price you can raise their priority above a more expensive drop shipper thus controlling your product margins. A script that imports drop shipper data (like quantities, cost etc.) can both update a product’s locations and alter the preferences at the same time.

Non Inventory is a useful option but it is interpreted an an unlimited quantity which may not always be how you want to treat it. A script can assign a “dummy” number instead. This will allow locations under it to be used (when the dummy quantity is exhausted) and will also add the dummy number to the total quantity available for sale. The total quantity is available during order entry and is the default quantity used for listing on channels (Channels can use the default total quantity or you can override and use a different quantity for each listing on each channel – See the Channels topic for more details.)