Future Stock - Multi Stock - ATUM Support Forum

Future Stock - Multi Stock

boldclimbing

Hi, we are exploring wether ATUM would work for our business. Could you tell us if ATUM free or one of its Plugins would be able to manage a current/main stock AND a future stock. By future stock I mean the current stock plus stock that will be coming in within a certain time frame OR incoming stock that we specify should be in the future stock. We need something like this so that we can display to our customers what we currently have in stock and what will be coming into stock in the next 6 weeks. Ideally the customer would be able to order from what we currently have in stock or from our future stock.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Iryna

Hello boldclimbing

Thanks for reaching out.

With ATUM Multi-Inventory add-on you can create as many inventory records per product as you need. You can allow your customers to select from which inventory they would like to make an order.

Although, Multi-Inventory doesn’t have the option that specifies “future stock”.

However, what you can do is create an inventory that allows backorders, so the customer can order the product from this inventory.

The backorders indicator will display the number of items required by customers in your Stock Central.

Please, note that the backorders will be shown in the Stock Negatives in your Stock Central, and you can easily view the products that are with this status.

So, the customer can make an order from the inventory that IS in stock, and from the one that allows the backorder (with zero stock).

I’ll leave you here the documentation about how Multi-Inventory works.

Also, here you can try a demo version of Multi-Inventory to try it and see if it suits your business.

Best regards,
Iryna

boldclimbing

Hi Iryna,

Thank you for the quick reply and info. This is very helpful.

I have a couple more questions:

Is it possible to have the two inventories linked because the future inventory is the main/current stock plus the incoming stock. So if a customer orders from the current stock the order would be taken out of the current stock and the future stock. And if the customer orders from the future stock the order would also be taken from the current and future stock. Does that make sense?
Is it possible to choose which stock the order or a partial order is coming from on the backend? We want to keep things simple for our customers and would prefer for them to not have to choose which stock it is coming from. We would just display the two different stocks so they can see their options and then after the order is inputted we would like to manually say where the order is getting taken from.

I guess now that I'm thinking about it a bit more it's possible that all the orders could be taken from the current stock, but the current stock would just show negatives (on the backend) for anything taken from the future stock until the stock arrives to our warehouse and is moved over to current stock.

I hope that all makes sense.

Iryna

Hi boldclimbing

Is it possible to have the two inventories linked because the future inventory is the main/current stock plus the incoming stock. So if a customer orders from the current stock the order would be taken out of the current stock and the future stock. And if the customer orders from the future stock the order would also be taken from the current and future stock. Does that make sense?

If I understand you correctly, you’d like to have, for example:

The main inventory
The inventory that allows backorders.

Is that right? If so, no matter from which inventory the customer makes an order – you can select from which inventory to take a product.

You can also set a priority of selling, to be able to organize the inventories as you want. So, the order you have set for the inventories permits the system to determine where the stock is taken from.
I’ll leave you here the tutorial about Inventory Sorting Mode Options that might be useful.

Is it possible to choose which stock the order or a partial order is coming from on the backend? We want to keep things simple for our customers and would prefer for them to not have to choose which stock it is coming from. We would just display the two different stocks so they can see their options and then after the order is inputted we would like to manually say where the order is getting taken from.

You can easily add the inventories for the order manually, so it allows you to select from which inventory you wish to take a product.

I guess now that I'm thinking about it a bit more it's possible that all the orders could be taken from the current stock, but the current stock would just show negatives (on the backend) for anything taken from the future stock until the stock arrives to our warehouse and is moved over to current stock.

Please, note that the negative stock should be set for secondary inventory because if you set the Main Inventory with backorders allowed, it will never pass to any of your inventories.

Hope it helps.

Best regards,
Iryna

boldclimbing

Hi Iryna,

Thank you for your reply and help. And sorry about my slow reply. We have been traveling.

If I understand you correctly, you’d like to have, for example:
The main inventory
The inventory that allows backorders.
Is that right? If so, no matter from which inventory the customer makes an order – you can select from which inventory to take a product.

I don't think that works. But maybe I don't fully understand. What you suggested is having two separate inventories that are not linked... correct? What we need is two inventories that are linked. One is what we have currently in stock and the other is the future stock which is our current stock PLUS the incoming stock. So wether the order comes from the current stock or the future stock it affects each other.

You can also set a priority of selling, to be able to organize the inventories as you want. So, the order you have set for the inventories permits the system to determine where the stock is taken from.
I’ll leave you here the tutorial about Inventory Sorting Mode Options that might be useful.

This could be helpful for diving the order between current and future stock.

You can easily add the inventories for the order manually, so it allows you to select from which inventory you wish to take a product.

We need to be able to easily say which inventory the order is getting taken out of (current or future). And it would be helpful if we can split an order to say some of the order is taken from the current and some of the orders taken from the future inventory.

Please, note that the negative stock should be set for secondary inventory because if you set the Main Inventory with backorders allowed, it will never pass to any of your inventories.

Ok. Interesting. I think I need my first question answered to fully understand this.
If you have a different solution than what I am thinking please let me know. I would guess there are other businesses that have the same case with current and future inventory.

Thank you.

Salva

Hi boldclimbing

Let me explain in detail the proposed solution: If you already know how many items are you going to receive in your next purchase (future stock), you can have as many inventories as needed per product. So you can have one for all current stock and another (or more than one) for future stock.
You just have to add the exact stock you are going to receive to the "future stock" inventory(ies).

And, if you need that the current stock is always used first when a customer makes a purchase, you just have to have it at the top of the list (top priority). So, once the current stock is depleted, the others will be used.
You don't need to use backorders if you only want to be able to sell stock that you are sure you are going to receive soon (and not more).

Please note that what we are proposing is not having the "current stock" summed to the "future stock" inventory. As with Multi-Inventory you can have the stocks separated, makes no sense to have the stock duplicated across inventories. So, the "current stock" inventory would have only current stock items, and the "future stock" inventory would have only future stock items. And, when an order is created, the inventory used will be added to it so you can know which one is used every time.

If anything is still not clear, please let me know and I'll be glad to clarify it further 😉

Best Regards,
Salva.

boldclimbing

Salva

Hey Salva,

Thank you for that explanation. This is great and makes a lot more sense. I think that will work for us.

I have a few questions:

I understand that the future stock will not be summed with the current stock but will just be incoming stock... But for our customers we want to display on our website our future stock as the current and future stock summed so they can see the total amount of products available. I'm guessing this can be implemented by our developers by summing the two inventories but I wanted to check with you if there is a way in ATUM to do this.
Could you explain to me or point me to documentation on how the process works with creating a PO from a supplier that would then get moved into the future inventory and then into the current inventory? Basically I'm imagining/hoping that we create a PO with an estimated arrival date to our stock. Once that order is arriving within 6 weeks it would get input into our future inventory (maybe automatically). Once the order shipment arrives to us we would then transfer that stock to our current inventory. Does that process all make sense? Anything we need to worry about? And how easy is it to do this?
We will need to allow backorders cause we allow customers to order things not in stock. Can we just allow backorders for our future inventory so if it isn't in stock in our current or future inventory it gets marked as backorder?
1. It's great that the system can auto prioritize taking inventory out of current inventory and then future inventory. If we decide after an order is input and taken out of the inventory that the order needs to be taken from a different inventory or will get shipped direct from the supplier (not taken from our inventory) is it possible to easily change this?

Thank you for your help. It is very much appreciated.
Thanks, Kyle

Iryna

Hi Kyle, boldclimbing

I understand that the future stock will not be summed with the current stock but will just be incoming stock... But for our customers we want to display on our website our future stock as the current and future stock summed so they can see the total amount of products available. I'm guessing this can be implemented by our developers by summing the two inventories but I wanted to check with you if there is a way in ATUM to do this.

If you have multiple inventories, you can choose to display on your website the total amount of products that are available without any problem. In fact, that is the way it works by default.

Could you explain to me or point me to documentation on how the process works with creating a PO from a supplier that would then get moved into the future inventory and then into the current inventory? Basically I'm imagining/hoping that we create a PO with an estimated arrival date to our stock. Once that order is arriving within 6 weeks it would get input into our future inventory (maybe automatically). Once the order shipment arrives to us we would then transfer that stock to our current inventory. Does that process all make sense? Anything we need to worry about? And how easy is it to do this?

You can easily add the product to the inventory that you need. I’ll leave you here a tutorial where you can see how to add an item with Multi-Inventory records to a PO. When creating a PO you can select the expected arrival date. Once the order arrives it’ll be transferred to the inventory you’ve selected. But please, note that you can't have a PO that has not arrived in stock.

We will need to allow backorders cause we allow customers to order things not in stock. Can we just allow backorders for our future inventory so if it isn't in stock in our current or future inventory it gets marked as backorder?

Yes, you can allow backorders only for future inventory, and leave the current inventory without allowing a backorder.

It's great that the system can auto prioritize taking inventory out of current inventory and then future inventory. If we decide after an order is input and taken out of the inventory that the order needs to be taken from a different inventory or will get shipped direct from the supplier (not taken from our inventory) is it possible to easily change this?

You can easily change the inventories used in the order. Here you can see a tutorial on how you can manage the items with MI records on your WC order.

Hope it helps, and if there is anything else I can help you with, just let me know.

Best regards.
Iryna

boldclimbing

Hi Iryna,

Thank you again for the answers. That all sounds great.

You can easily add the product to the inventory that you need. I’ll leave you here a tutorial where you can see how to add an item with Multi-Inventory records to a PO. When creating a PO you can select the expected arrival date. Once the order arrives it’ll be transferred to the inventory you’ve selected. But please, note that you can't have a PO that has not arrived in stock.

Ok great. When you say "that you can't have a PO that has not arrived in stock."... you are saying that each PO must be assigned to an inventory at all times, correct? If so I would think an easy solution would be to have an inventory called "in-production/in-transit" that these are assigned to until they move to our future stock.

Is it possible bulk adjust which inventory an order is taken from? A lot of our orders are hundreds of products so going product by product could be time consuming. It would be great if we could say this entire order is taken from future inventory or should not be taken from stock and will be made to order.

Also, is it then possible to transfer all the products of one inventory (future inventory) to another (current inventory)? Do you have documentation for this?

I have a couple more questions...

It looks like for inventories to be reduced from an order payment needs to be received. For some of our orders we will be invoicing the customer after their order has shipped, so is this a setting we can change to when the order is received instead of when payment is received? and if so how does this work with then changing which inventory the order is taken out of?
Do you offer an inventory check list? I couldn't find details about this. Basically this would be a list of all current inventory plus any orders from the current inventory that haven't shipped yet.

Thanks!

Iryna

Hi Kyle, boldclimbing

Ok great. When you say "that you can't have a PO that has not arrived in stock."... you are saying that each PO must be assigned to an inventory at all times, correct? If so I would think an easy solution would be to have an inventory called "in-production/in-transit" that these are assigned to until they move to our future stock.

Exactly, all the items with MI enabled within this Purchase Order, must have at least one inventory assigned. But please, be careful with this and keep in mind that once the delivery has been made and the stock has been added to the inventory, to change it to the other inventory, you should delete the delivery and create another one with the new inventory.

Is it possible bulk adjust which inventory an order is taken from? A lot of our orders are hundreds of products so going product by product could be time consuming. It would be great if we could say this entire order is taken from future inventory or should not be taken from stock and will be made to order.

When processing an order, you select the inventories you want to add, and on each inventory, you can type the quantity of the product you want to get from this inventory. So, in one order you can use as many inventories as you wish. But you can’t bulk assign an inventory to the entire order for many products, you'll need to go one by one.

Also, is it then possible to transfer all the products of one inventory (future inventory) to another (current inventory)? Do you have documentation for this?

You can use an Inventory Log to create a transfer, so you can Increase or Reduce from an Inventory Log automatically.
I’ll leave you here documentation on how to change stock from Inventory Log for products with MI records.

Another option is that you can clone the "future" inventory, which will duplicate the inventory record, but then you'll need to configure the settings according to your "current" inventory.

It looks like for inventories to be reduced from an order payment needs to be received. For some of our orders we will be invoicing the customer after their order has shipped, so is this a setting we can change to when the order is received instead of when payment is received? and if so how does this work with then changing which inventory the order is taken out of?

This is the way WooCommerce works, although ATUM has an option "Change Stock on 'Completed' status (ATUM Inventory > Settings > General ). When enabling this option, the products' stock will be discounted only when any WooCommerce order's status is changed to 'Completed'. Any other status won't alter the stocks.

Do you offer an inventory check list? I couldn't find details about this. Basically this would be a list of all current inventory plus any orders from the current inventory that haven't shipped yet.

In Stock Central, you can see all the inventories that are In stock, even if they haven't shipped yet. Is that what you need, please?

Best regards,
Iryna

boldclimbing

Hi Iryna,

That all sounds good.

When processing an order, you select the inventories you want to add, and on each inventory, you can type the quantity of the product you want to get from this inventory. So, in one order you can use as many inventories as you wish. But you can’t bulk assign an inventory to the entire order for many products, you'll need to go one by one.

Ok. Is it possible to say that a whole order should not be taken from inventory? Or do we have to go product by product?

This is the way WooCommerce works, although ATUM has an option "Change Stock on 'Completed' status (ATUM Inventory > Settings > General ). When enabling this option, the products' stock will be discounted only when any WooCommerce order's status is changed to 'Completed'. Any other status won't alter the stocks.

By 'completed' you mean the order is inputted into woocommerce or the order has shipped to the customer?

In Stock Central, you can see all the inventories that are In stock, even if they haven't shipped yet. Is that what you need, please?

I'm not sure. Basically we need to do an inventory check once a quarter to see that our physical stock matches our inventory records. To do this check we need a list of what should be on the shelf which is the current inventory PLUS any orders that haven't shipped. I hope that makes sense.

Thanks,
Kyle

Iryna

Hi Kyle, boldclimbing

Ok. Is it possible to say that a whole order should not be taken from inventory? Or do we have to go product by product?

If you want to set the inventories manually, no, it is not possible. If you have in your order, for example, 10 items, you can’t assign the inventory to the whole order. You’ll need to go product by product choosing the inventory and typing the quantity for each product you want to get from the specific inventory.

Another way to do it faster is to configure the option “Auto-assign inventories to WC Orders ". It is a global option, that assigns inventories automatically to WooCommerce order items added to any order from the backend for any product with MI enabled.

By 'completed' you mean the order is inputted into woocommerce or the order has shipped to the customer?

The “Completed” status means that the order is fulfilled and shipped to the customer.

I'm not sure. Basically we need to do an inventory check once a quarter to see that our physical stock matches our inventory records. To do this check we need a list of what should be on the shelf which is the current inventory PLUS any orders that haven't shipped. I hope that makes sense.

You could try to do this with our premium add-on Export PRO. With it, you can export a file with the products you need and their inventories. I'll leave you here the documentation on how this add-on works.

Furthermore, we have the Stock Takes module that is already included in the ATUM App beta and we will soon develop it for WordPress as well.

If you want to test the beta of the App, please, open a private ticket to request access.

Best regards,
Iryna

boldclimbing

Hi Iryna,

If you want to set the inventories manually, no, it is not possible. If you have in your order, for example, 10 items, you can’t assign the inventory to the whole order. You’ll need to go product by product choosing the inventory and typing the quantity for each product you want to get from the specific inventory.

Ok. I get that but was just wondering if it's possible to just say that a whole order should not be taken out of any of the inventories.

The “Completed” status means that the order is fulfilled and shipped to the customer.

Ok. So with this setting the inventory would not actually be reduced until the order ships correct? So would it be possible for another customer to order the same inventory before the first order ships? So customer 1 orders the last "Blue Brush ", would customer 2 see that "Blue Brush" is out of stock before customer 1's order has shipped?

You could try to do this with our premium add-on Export PRO. With it, you can export a file with the products you need and their inventories. I'll leave you here the documentation on how this add-on works.
Furthermore, we have the Stock Takes module that is already included in the ATUM App beta and we will soon develop it for WordPress as well.

Ok. Maybe the add-on export will work but that seems clunky. As for the Stock Takes module, I'm not sure what the functionality of that is. Do you have documentation?
How do your customers usually do a stock check?

Thank you, Kyle

Salva

Hi boldclimbing

Ok. I get that but was just wondering if it's possible to just say that a whole order should not be taken out of any of the inventories.

No, that isn't possible. Multi-Inventory is enabled globally (for all products) or per product. So, if any product has MI enabled, the inventory that is going to be used must be specified (always). This is a requirement because we need to know where to discount or add the stock.
Please note that, when you enable MI, the regular stock handled by WooCommerce does not exist anymore and it's handled entirely by Multi-Inventory.

Ok. So with this setting the inventory would not actually be reduced until the order ships correct? So would it be possible for another customer to order the same inventory before the first order ships? So customer 1 orders the last "Blue Brush ", would customer 2 see that "Blue Brush" is out of stock before customer 1's order has shipped?

Indeed, that would be possible when the setting is enabled and the stock would show the current value until discounted. So it could lead to having a product available when it isn't and will end going to minus (not important if you are going to allow backorders though)

Ok. Maybe the add-on export will work but that seems clunky. As for the Stock Takes module, I'm not sure what the functionality of that is. Do you have documentation?
How do your customers usually do a stock check?

The Stock takes module is included in our ATUM mobile App. Not ready for WordPress yet though.
And it's just for doing stock-taking with barcode scanning also supported. So you can compare your WC records with your physical stock and adjust when necessary.
If you need to trial the ATUM App (actually in beta), please do open a private ticket and request it 😉

Best Regards,
Salva.

boldclimbing

Hi Salva & Iryna,
Thank you again for the help. We just had our dev team install ATUM and these add-ons: Multi-Inventory, Purchase Orders PRO, Export PRO, & Action Logs.

We are just starting to go through the process of adding inventory. Because we have thousands of products, and most of our products have about 10 variations of colors we have probably over 10k in products. Because of this we need an easy way of updating the product inventory instead of going product by product and variation by variation in woocommerce. I'm guessing this can be done with export pro or maybe with a PO, but wanted to check with you to see what the easiest way is. Also, each of these products/variations will need to have an inventory added called "In stock within 6 weeks" as we discussed. I found this explanation of how to add inventories (https://stockmanagementlabs.crunch.help/atum-multi-inventory/how-to-create-multiple-inventories) but this would also take too much time with how many products we have.

Salva

Hi boldclimbing

With the Export PRO would be just copy-pasting rows in Google sheets and importing all the data when ready. But for 10K products, it can be a tedious task, indeed.
An alternative would be to create an importing script to do all this process automatically but you will need a developer to help you out with this process.

Best Regards,
Salva.

boldclimbing

Hi Salva
Do you have any documentation for how this would work using Export Pro? We would need:

To update the main inventory
Add a 2nd inventory for all products
Add the inventory for the 2nd inventory

Iryna

Hi Kyle,

You can find it out by following this article. I'll also leave you here the info on how to import the data that might be useful.

Anyway, if you'll have any further questions, just open a private ticket and we'll be happy to help you.

Best regards,
Iryna