ChannelEngine: stock locations [beta]

About this article

This article describes ChannelEngine's support for multiple stock locations, how to enable it, and how to configure it.

Table of contents

Introduction

Limitations

Enable the stock locations feature

Configure the stock locations feature

Add a stock location

Order routing

Map a stock location

Update different stock locations via the API

Delete stock locations

Introduction

If you have stock locations spread across different countries or even different parts of the same country (e.g.: different states in the United States), you can benefit from ChannelEngine's stock locations feature. With it, you can configure multiple locations, allocate your stock accordingly, and define the default behavior for when the stock in one of your locations is depleted.

Limitations

The following setups are currently out of scope:

• Marketplaces with sales channels - unlike country-specific marketplaces, such as Amazon Italy or bol.com Belgium, marketplaces with support for sales channels are not supported. E.g.: most Mirakl-based marketplaces, Zalando, etc.
• Merchant plugins - BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce (née Magento), Shopify, WooCommerce, etc.
• Orders with multiple acknowledgements - orders acknowledged by more than one party, such as your main stock location and an external warehouse managed by your logistics partner, are not supported – unless you centralize the acknowledgement of your orders via an ERP, OMS, or WMS.

Flow - not supported

Flow - supported

Enable the stock locations feature

As the feature is currently in beta, you need to contact your Onboarding Specialist or Customer Success Manager so they can enable it for you.

Note that this feature only works in combination with feeds and/or an API connection and not with merchant plugins (e.g.: Magento, PrestaShop, etc.).

Configure the stock locations feature

Once the stock locations feature is enabled, you can configure it by going to Products, Stock locations. If you do not see that option, log out and then log back into ChannelEngine.

You are then presented with an overview of your existing stock locations, showing their names, the country where they are based, whether they are the default or they fall back to the default, and a couple of associated actions.

Add a stock location

To add a new stock location:

1. Click the Add button at the bottom of the overview.
2. In the popup that appears, enter a name for the stock location. You can set it as the default by ticking the Default stock location box. Or you can set it to fall back to the default once the stock allocated to it is depleted by selecting the Fallback to default box.
3. Although you do not have to provide the full address of the stock location, you do need to select a country.
4. When you are done, click Add to save the stock location.

Order routing

When working with different stock locations, you can use predefined business rules that assign incoming orders to specific stock locations.

To add an order routing on ChannelEngine:

1. In the left-hand side menu, click Orders, Routing. Then, click the Add button.
2. In the Add: Order routing dialog box, enter information in the following fields:
   • Name - the order routing’s name.
   • Select channels - click the dropdown box to select the marketplaces that apply to this routing. Note that you can only select marketplaces that are not already active in other routings. Marketplaces are grouped according to how they handle order lines:
   • Select stock locations - the stock locations you want to use. The combined stock of the selected locations, minus the reserved stock, is then exported. You can also enable or disable the Only ship with blank boxes and Block Amazon Logistics as a carrier for this order settings here.
3. Click Next.
4. You can now set up the conditional rules for your routing, following a structure similar to ChannelEngine’s Product selection page. These rules are applied when orders are imported into ChannelEngine. You can filter on fields from order fields (e.g.: Shipment region, Delivery country, GTIN, etc.), as well as ChannelEngine’s default product data and custom fields.
   NB: shipment regions must be abbreviated. E.g.: New Jersey = NJ, Massachusetts = MA.
5. Select the stock location(s) desired.
6. Click Add to save the order routing. Order routing rules are applied to new orders.
   NB: once established, it is not possible to change the order of your routings. Think and plan carefully before configuring it.

Map a stock location

To map different stock quantities to each stock location configured, go to Products, Product feeds, click the pencil icon by a feed, and scroll to the bottom of the page to Stock locations. Each of the stock locations configured can be mapped to a different stock attribute, according to the allocation available in your feed.

Once you map your stock locations to your stock attributes, the stock quantity per location becomes visible. Note that if you go to the products overview, the stock shown per product is the Overall stock (i.e.: aggregated) – not the stock for a specific stock location. To see a breakdown of the stock per product per location, select a product.

Update different stock locations via the API

To update your stock per stock location via the API:

1. Retrieve your StockLocationId via the GET /v2/stocklocations endpoint.
2. Update the stock for each specific location via the PUT /v2/offer/stock endpoint. E.g.:

[   {
"MerchantProductNo": "ABCDE12345",     
"Stock": 15,     
"Price": 25,     
"StockLocationId": 35   
} ] 

Using the old /v2/offers endpoint

Although it is technically possible to continue using the /v2/offers endpoint in your integration, which does not include the StockLocationId, this is not recommended – especially if you also use a product feed to update your stock.

In general, if your integration is still using the /v2/offers endpoint, you should use a single location when making calls.

The examples below cover three possible scenarios, with the default stock location indicated by an asterisk:

Scenario 1

• Location 1* - stock updated via PUT /v2/offers. 
• Location 2 - stock updated via a product feed.
• Location 3 - stock updated via a product feed.

ChannelEngine updates Location 1, but not locations 2 and 3. 

Scenario 2

• Location 1 - stock updated via PUT /v2/offers.
• Location 2* - stock updated via a product feed.
• Location 3 - stock updated via a product feed.

ChannelEngine updates Location 2 when importing the product feed and when receiving an API call. Location 1 is not updated.

Scenario 3

• Location 1* - stock updated via PUT /v2/offers.
• Location 2 - stock updated via PUT /v2/offers.
• Location 3 - stock updated via a product feed.

If the StockLocationId is not specified, ChannelEngine only updates Location 1.

For more information on how to update different stock locations via the API, check out the API reference.

Delete stock locations

If a stock location is not assigned to a marketplace or order routing, you can delete it via ChannelEngine's web interface. the UI. Currently, it is not possible to delete it via the API.