ChannelEngine: stock reservation

About this article

This article describes stock reservations on ChannelEngine.

Table of contents

Introduction

Overview

How to choose a setting

Examples

Stock reservation vs. stock global turnover

Introduction

The stock reservation feature is designed to eliminate your risk of overselling. A stock reservation is a temporary hold that ChannelEngine places on a specific product once ChannelEngine receives an order for the product from one of your connected channels. E.g.: if you have a stock of 17 vases and two are sold, ChannelEngine exports a stock of 15 to all connected channels. 

After the order reaches a given status, e.g.: Shipped, the stock reservation is released, and the stock from your product feed or other stock update method becomes leading again.

By default, the stock reservation feature is enabled on all of your channels in your tenant. However, it is an advanced setting that you can optimize. Fine-tune how soon your stock is released back to your channels based on:

• How aggressively you want to optimize your sellable stock
• How often you send stock updates to ChannelEngine

Overview

To modify how soon the reserved stock is released back to your channels, go to Settings, Settings, Advanced, Stock.

Within the setting Calculate stock reservation, select one of the following options from the dropdown, ordered by most aggressive at the top to most conservative at the bottom:

1. Calculate stock reservation based on orders with the status Awaiting payment
2. Calculate stock reservation based on orders with the status Awaiting payment and New (default)
3. Calculate stock reservation based on orders with the status Awaiting payment, New and In progress (legacy default)
4. None: don't calculate stock reservations

How to choose a setting

To decide which option to choose, read the description of each option below.

Calculate stock reservation based on orders with the status Awaiting payment

The stock reservation remains intact until the order status changes to New.

The buyer has paid, but you have not yet acknowledged the order. This setting is ideal for merchants who want to maximize sellable quantities across all their channels aggressively. Your products will rarely show as out of stock on your channels, but your real stock level may differ from what is shown on the channel if more orders for the same product come in quickly.

As an extra protection against stock-outs during discrete sales events, turn on the stock global turnover feature on your high-volume channels. Check out the section below Stock reservation vs. stock global turnover and the article ChannelEngine: stock global turnover.

Calculate stock reservation based on orders with the status Awaiting payment and New

(default) By default, the stock reservation remains intact until the order status changes to In progress.

On average, reservations are released back to your channels within 1.5 hours, depending on how quickly you acknowledge orders and send regular stock updates. This setting is ideal for merchants who send stock updates to ChannelEngine within 30 minutes of retrieving orders.

Calculate stock reservation based on orders with the status Awaiting payment, New and In progress

The stock reservation remains intact until the order status changes to Shipped, Canceled, or Closed.

Reserved quantities may take days to become available again on your channels. This setting is ideal for merchants who take the most conservative approach to preventing overselling or who send stock updates within one hour of retrieving orders.

None: don't calculate stock reservations

The ChannelEngine-calculated stock is not exported to your channels; whatever stock you submit to ChannelEngine is exported to your channels. 

Choose this setting if the connection between your merchant system and ChannelEngine experiences latency. (Note that bol has stock reservation enabled by default; check out bol: stock reservation.)

(alternative) Auto close all orders - if you use ChannelEngine to send stock to your channels, but you do not handle orders and/or shipments via ChannelEngine, you can automatically close orders that are imported from your channels. Go to Settings, Settings, Advanced settings, Orders. Enable the Set orders to closed after import setting and save. All new orders are set to Closed right away, and no stock reservation is applied.

Examples

Release stock on In Progress orders

Choose Calculate stock reservation based on orders with the status Awaiting payment and New.

This is the recommended and default setting.

Timeline example 

Friday 17:00
Stock update: 10 units

Friday 17:30
5 sold on bol
Reserved: 5 units (order) + 5 units (turnover buffer)
Marketplaces see: 0 available

Friday 17:45
You retrieve orders, order reservation released
Marketplaces see: 5 available (10 - 5 turnover buffer)

Friday 18:00
Stock update: 5 units
Marketplaces see: 0 available (5 - 5 turnover buffer)

Friday 18:30
Turnover buffer expires (1 hour after sale)
Marketplaces see: 5 available
Product back in stock

With this setting, you avoid a double reservation on the items, and your time out of stock is kept to 1 hour. This setting is recommended to merchants that send stock updates to ChannelEngine every 30 minutes or less.

Release stock on Shipped orders

Choose Calculate stock reservation based on orders with the status Awaiting payment, New and In progress.

Timeline example 

Friday 17:00
ChannelEngine receives stock update: 10 units
Marketplaces see: 10 available

Friday 17:30
5 units sold on bol
Marketplaces see: 5 available (10 - 5 reserved)

Friday 17:45
You retrieve orders via API or plugin connector
Marketplaces see: 5 available (still reserved in ChannelEngine)

Friday 18:00
ChannelEngine receives your stock update: 5 units (you already deducted the sold items)
Marketplaces see: 0 available (5 - 5 still reserved)
Problem: Stock remains unnecessarily reserved

Monday 17:00
Orders shipped, reservation released
Marketplaces see: 5 available
Product is finally back in stock

The drawbacks of this approach are that you have a double reservation on the items, and the time out of stock spans the course of days. This approach may benefit merchants who send stock updates to ChannelEngine more than 30 minutes apart.

Stock reservation vs. stock global turnover

Each channel has a channel-specific setting called global stock turnover. Enabling both the stock global turnover gives you an extra layer of protection from stock-outs, which is especially important on channels that have strict seller KPIs, like Amazon or bol.

Once the global stock turnover is enabled on a given channel, the amount of reserved stock is additionally calculated from:

• Orders from the past one hour, regardless of their order status

You can enable the stock global turnover on a per-channel basis, in addition to the advanced stock reservation feature, which applies to all of your channels. 

For more details on the stock global turnover feature, check out ChannelEngine: stock global turnover.

To understand the differences between stock reservation and stock global turnover, check out the table below.

Stock reservation vs. stock global turnover