Updating Warehouse Inventory
Overview
In order to be able to generate effective orders in automated fashion, one of the key components is to provide current available inventory to order at the warehouse location you wish to order from. To do this, you need to enter the "Order Generation" service in the main website menu on the left. If you have access to this feature, you will see an option "WH Inventory Upload" on the toolbar at the top of the page. Clicking on this option will open the upload template shown below.
If you're familiar with the system, the ChainID represents the unique retailer and is a numeric value. Inventory for ordering is segregated by retailer. The next field "WH" is the unique warehouse identifier for the warehouse you're uploading inventory. This is generated by Avantalytics upon warehouse creation. Item# is the retailer item and Units On Hand is the total units available to order for the item. In certain situations, inventory may be desired to be uploaded by an additional item known as "Child Item" – this allows you to represent one retailer item as the sum of one or more items. For ordering purposes, the inventory will be aggregated to the Item# level, but several options remain on how to allocate the orders across the universe of child items. Additionally, and also optionally, you can break out inventory by sublocation and perform similar aggregation by sub-location instead, or in addition to, child item.
Another final feature here is the ability to "wipe out" and replace a batch of inventory completely – this is the "full replace" option. Alternatively you can selectively update the current inventory for the warehouse/chain/item/child item/sublocation by choosing the partial update feature. Doing so allows you to simply add or overwrite portions of the existing inventory without invalidating the current inventory and replacing in its entirety.
Uploading data to a warehouse location allows you to limit what you order to what you actually have available to ship. It prevents creating orders that can't be filled.
Note: If you have more than one person placing orders, it's best to upload your warehouse inventory before any orders are placed.