Stock management

Introduction

21.Commerce has a Stock management system that allows you to manage your inventory per item. This guide will show you exactly how it works.

Video tutorial

Configuring Stock management

In the default settings of 21.Commerce, Stock management is disabled. To enable it and configure additional Stock management settings, go to “Shop administration” → “Assortment” → “Stock management”.

An item can have three different warehouse behaviours (often used in explanations below):

• fully available: These items are considered to be available at very short notice
• reorderable: Items reorderable at specified delivery times
• will not be reordered: Discontinued items / unique items – will not be reordered

The following settings are available in the Stock management screen:

Enable / disable Stock management

The first setting, “Stock management”, allows you to enable or disable stock management. If stock management is disabled, all stock and minimum stock information created for an item will be ignored and not displayed to the customer. The items can be ordered without restriction, regardless of their Stock. Stocks are not updated when orders are placed.

Inventory update

With “Inventory update”, you can set how and when 21.Commerce updates the Stock of an item after an order. Here you can choose between two options:

• “on completion of the order”: As soon as a customer successfully completes an order, the Stock is corrected directly by the shop.
• “manually”: The shop does not correct the Stocks when orders are received. This behaviour is usually desired when AbaNinja manages the Stocks and changes are delivered via shop synchronisation.

Notification when minimum Stock is reached

This setting controls how the warning is forwarded to the shop operator (administrator) when the minimum Stock of an item is reached.

• “manually”: If you select “manually”, the administrator will not be notified. This may be desirable if you manage your entire inventory via AbaNinja.
• “by email”: You can also have the notification sent to you by email. An email will be sent to the address configured in “Shop settings” → “General settings”.

Customer sees stock

The configuration option “Customer sees stock” controls whether customers can see the current Stocks or not.

• “Traffic light system” (red, yellow, green): This is the most common display format in end customer business. You want to provide rough information about availability without specifying a concrete number. The yellow status is used when an item falls below the minimum Stock and a “reorderable” or “non-reorderable” stock behaviour has been configured.

• “Exact Stocks”: Often used in closed B2B shops to provide purchasing customers with accurate information. A short text display shows the Stock of the items. If the minimum Stock is exceeded and the configuration “reorderable” or “not reorderable” is used, “only X items left in stock” is displayed in the shop. Information is also provided on when an item should be available again (if reorderable, source: Deliverable in field).

In the item detail view and in single-level item display:

The following views use a simplified display of the Stocks:

• Two-level item display, single column: … items
• Two-level item display, multi-column: Stock: … items
• Shopping cart and order overview: Stock: … items

Use cost price field

If you activate the cost price field, you can store the respective stock cost price for each individual item. This is only displayed in the 21.Commerce administration.

Overbooking of items that cannot be ordered

Here you can control the shop’s overbooking protection: If you set this option to “yes” and thus deactivate the protection, the item may be overbooked. This is sometimes explicitly desired by shop operators. By default, however, 21.Commerce prevents overbooking of items that cannot be ordered by selecting “no” in the configuration.

Overbooking protection is based on a reservation system: If overbooking is to be prevented, 21.Commerce reduces the available stock of an item as soon as a customer adds it to their shopping cart – even before the purchase is completed. This prevents an item from being sold multiple times at the same time. However, if the customer does not purchase the item, the reserved stock is released again after the session expires (usually after one hour). This means that, especially in the case of unique items, an item may not appear in the shop for a short time but become available again later.

As a shop operator, you must decide for yourself whether you want to run the risk of overbooking or prevent this and accept that a customer who is ready to buy may not be able to purchase the item because it is currently reserved.

Using stock management

Stock management can only be used if it is enabled.

Stock settings for an item

An item can have the following stock settings:

• “Maximum order quantity”: Defines the maximum number of items a customer can add to their shopping cart per order (regardless of Stocks → only for items marked as “will not be reordered”).
• “Minimum order quantity”: Here you can specify the minimum number of items that must be ordered at one time.
• “Minimum stock quantity”: Minimum number in stock before a notification is sent.
• “Stock”: Number of items in stock.
• “Available in”: Freely selectable text, e.g. “Week 21”, “3 days”, etc.
• “Stock behaviour”: What should happen to the item when the Stock reaches 0?

Quick lookup of stock behaviour types:

• “fully available”: The item is available regardless of Stocks and any specified delivery times.
• “Reorderable”: The item will be reordered. Customers can therefore order more items than are in stock
• “Will not be reordered”: Customers can only order as many items as are in stock. When the Stock reaches 0, the item is hidden and can no longer be ordered

Stock settings for an item

There are three options for adjusting the stock settings for an item. This allows you to edit stock-related information for each individual item.

1. Per item via the item editing screen: “Assortment” → “Items” Select the desired item. The stock settings can be found at the bottom of the item editing screen.
2. Via item mass changes: “Assortment” → “Mass changes” When it comes to changing warehouse-relevant data for multiple items quickly and clearly, mass changes are the simplest solution. All relevant settings can be adjusted centrally.
3. Via Stock management: “Assortment” → “Stock management” → “Stock management - Stock postings”

Note on “negative Stocks”

If the Stock of an item falls below zero after an order has been placed and notifications are enabled, a notification will be sent in all cases.

Please note: If parent/sub-items1 are used in the shop, negative Stocks for sub-items should be avoided if possible, as this may lead to incorrect stock availability being displayed in the item list (where the total Stocks of the sub-items are calculated).

Goods receipt/issue

Via “Assortment” → “Stock management” → “Goods receipts”, the shop provides a simple mask with which you can quickly record goods receipts.

Manually

Enter the item number and the quantity to be added or deducted. The shop adds the items to the corresponding stock or deducts them.

Enter via barcode scanner

Items can also be booked in or out using a scanner. To do this, a standard barcode scanner is operated in keyboard wedge mode.

Further help

If you have any questions or problems, our support team will be happy to help. To do so, open a support ticket:

1. Go to the Swiss21 portal.
2. Click on your profile picture in the top right corner.
3. Click on “Support”.
4. Click on “Contact support”.
5. Fill out the form and our support team will get back to you as soon as possible.

Support opening hours: Monday – Friday I 8:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. I 1:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.