Shipment and Order Management

Note: This page is currently under revision!

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MSI supports order management through Magento. When implemented, MSI manages all inventory updates for invoiced and shipped, refunded, and cancelled orders. The following information details SSA and processes for managing your orders.

• SSA at Checkout
• SSA at Shipment
• Rerun SSA and ship
• Override SSA recommendations and ship
• Refund orders and update inventory
• Cancel unshipped orders

For additional information on order management including processing orders, invoices, and shipments, see the Magento User Guide.

SSA at Checkout

SSA uses the priority of sources configured per stock. These priorities apply through SSA to all orders, regardless if a customer completes checkout through your website or your staff enters an order through the Magento Admin.

After adding a quantity of products to cart and completing checkout, the SSA runs using the priorities set in stocks. The algorithm works through the priority of sources, verifying the availability of Salable Quantity, option of backorders per product and source if positive quantities not available, and further configurations.

Customers never see or interact with the SSA as it runs completely in the background, automatically updating quantity amounts and setting shipment options. The priority of the sources is set by their top-to-bottom order. The higher the source in the list, the higher its priority of use. The following image details the source priority for a stock assigned to a UK website sales channel.

SSA at Shipment

The Source Selection Algorithm is accessible during Shipment procedures for an order. You must have an order entered in your store to access the page. The order does not require an invoice to view available options or rerun the algorithm.

To complete and ship an order, it must have completed payment and be invoiced. At this time, you can rerun the SSA and ship, or override the SSA options and manually set the sources and quantities to fulfill shipment.

• We recommend rerunning the SSA to review recommendations.
• If you want to change the selections, you can override with manual source deductions.
• You should use the override option when shipping a partial order, completing the rest of the shipment at a later date.

Rerun SSA and ship

Before proceeding to shipment, you should rerun the SSA. You can run the algorithm and complete shipping for entire orders ready for shipment or partially shipped orders. If you manually change the deductions and rerun SSA, it clears your changes and presents the latest best matches according to the algorithm.

When you rerun SSA, it checks the current quantities per source, weighing the best deductions in inventory quantities based on the selected algorithm. The initial SSA algorithm determines shipments based on source priority configured on the stock. Additional algorithms will be available in later releases, or through custom code and extensions.

Note: Ensure the order has completed payment and is invoiced prior to shipping.

1. On the Admin sidebar, tap Sales. Then, choose Orders.

2. Tap the View link for an active order (or your test order).

3. Tap Ship on the upper menu bar. The ordered products, quantities, sources, and SSA options display.

   Source Selection Shipment in an Order

4. Tap the Source Selection Algorithm button. At this time, the down-arrow offers Source Priority.

   Note: Later releases will include additional algorithm options in the drop-arrow list.

   Source Selection Rerun SSA

5. The Items Ordered table updates with recommended amounts to deduct.

6. Tap Proceed to Shipment to continue.

   Note: If you do not have enough salable products per source and stock, you may need to select a source from the Select a Source to Ship from drop-down menu. Try to proceed and send a partial shipment.

7. Complete shipment. If not enough products are available through sources, MSI alerts with messages. You may need to send partial shipments and update amounts in the New Shipment page.

Override SSA recommendations and ship

You can manually override and set each source and quantity of products in an order directly through the Ship option. This option is helpful when you want to control every product deduction or when fulfilling partial shipments.

When selected, the Source Selection page displays options for selecting a source to ship from, the ordered quantity of product(s), and the currently available sources and salable quantities. Customers are not charged additional amounts when you override and modify quantities per source.

Note: Ensure the order has completed payment and is invoiced prior to shipping.

1. On the Admin sidebar, tap Sales. Then, choose Orders.

2. Tap the View link for an active order (or your test order).

3. Tap Ship on the upper menu bar. The ordered products, quantities, sources, and SSA options display.

   Source Selection Shipment in an Order

4. In the Select a Source to Ship from, select a Source from the drop-down menu. The Qty to Deduct field is enabled to enter the amount to remove.

   For this example, the Texas Warehouse is selected with 20 entered. To keep an on-hand quantity, this could be changed to 10 and another warehouse selected to fulfill the order.

   Quantities Selected per Source

5. Tap Proceed to Shipment to initiate shipping. This overrides the SSA recommendations. The inventory reservations convert to quantity deductions against the selected sources.

6. Complete shipment. If not enough products are available through sources, MSI alerts with messages. You may need to send partial shipments and update amounts through the New Shipment page.

Refund orders and update inventory

You can refund orders (via a credit memo), either in full or in part. For more information on refund credit memos, see the Magento User Guide.

After the order is refunded, enter another credit memo to return the product quantity to the originating source:

1. On the Admin sidebar tap Sales. Then, choose Orders.

2. Find the completed order in the grid. Then in the Action column, click the View link to open the order.

3. In the button bar at the top of the page, tap Credit Memo. The button appears only after an order is invoiced.

4. Tap the Return to Stock checkbox. The product quantity will return to the specific source. For example, if the product came from a warehouse in New York, the SKU quantity updates at that location.

5. Complete the credit memo. You can verify the update in stock through the product page.

Credit Memo for Returning Stock

Cancel unshipped orders

If an order has not been shipped and is cancelled, MSI automatically returns the product stock to the salable quantity. Until invoice and shipping, purchased products are reserved against the salable quantity, not deducted from the actual quantity. Invoicing and shipping converts the reservation to an inventory deduction.

Behind the scenes, MSI automatically enters a compensation reservation removing the hold on the product quantity. The quantity returns to the aggregated virtual salable quantity.