Stock control, part of DispatchThread
Stock that knows about your orders
One figure per colour and size, in the shop, in the warehouse, or with Amazon. Orders hold it the moment they arrive and take it off when they ship. Suppliers, counting, a till for the counter, and the bench told where every item is coming from.
Shown on a demonstration shop with invented customers, orders and stock.
Stock
- Every colour and size is its own item
- A clothing range runs to thousands of them. Each one has a figure for the shop, the warehouse, damaged, and Fulfilled by Amazon, and a history of every movement with a name against it.
- Orders hold stock as they arrive
- Website and Amazon orders are read every fifteen minutes. A paid order holds its items at once, so two customers cannot buy the last one; a shipped order takes them off; a line that could not be held is marked short and tried again.
- Not everything is a shelf
- An alteration is made at the factory and never takes stock. A pack of two takes two singles. A line from a supplier is ordered when it is sold. The rules are written down once and the figures follow them.
- Counting on a tablet
- Quick count by location, a full stock take, a low stock report that knows what orders are waiting for, and a list of what is selling but has never been counted.
Suppliers and Amazon
- Who makes what
- Each product knows its supplier and lead time, so an order for something not on the shelf says what it is waiting on and when it is due, and the checkout can promise the right date.
- Your Amazon listings, kept honest
- Listings matched to the items on your shelf. Quantities sent to your own-stock listings every five minutes, so Amazon stops selling when you run out. A list of what is sold out here and still showing on Amazon.
- Stock sent to FBA
- Boxes sent to Amazon’s warehouses leave your figures for good, with the shipment number against the movement, and a restock list at six weeks’ cover beside Amazon’s own suggestion.
- The website, followed
- The catalogue is read every hour. New products become uncounted items, renamed ones follow, and when sizes are rebuilt on the website the counts, barcodes and history carry over to the new ones.
The shop counter
- A till
- Full screen, staff PINs, a customer-facing screen, receipts on a receipt printer, cash drawer, card payments through a PayPal reader. Refunds, exchanges, credit notes for a return without a receipt, parked baskets, gift vouchers, and selling offline when the internet drops.
- The same stock
- A sale on the counter comes off the same figures the website sells from. Prices and VAT come from your BigCommerce catalogue, so the counter charges what the website charges, sale prices included.
- Labels and bag labels
- Item labels print as a delivery is received. A collection bag label prints by itself at the despatch bench when a paid order is put aside for a customer.
With the packing bench
The two were built to be used together, and it shows in small ways.
Every item on the despatch queue carries a pill: in the shop, in the warehouse, on order from the supplier, or made at the factory. A batch of fifty is sorted into what can go now before a label is bought.
The delivery dates module quotes from these figures, so a counted item promises tomorrow and an uncounted one promises what the supplier’s lead time says.
It has run one business so far, ours. Amazon reads work today; two further Amazon permissions wait on Amazon’s review. Those are the sort of thing we would rather tell you now.
Register your interest
Tell us which modules you are waiting for and we will write to you when they open, and before that if we want to show you something. Nothing is stored on this website: it goes to our inbox, and we reply as people.
- Today
- Despatch is live and free for fifty orders a month. Start free.
- Soon
- Stock control, delivery dates, returns and order support are running in our own shops and being made ready for yours.
- First
- The people on this list hear first, and some of them get to try things before anyone else.