Processing Merchandise Fulfillment when Using a Warehouse
If you use a warehouse when fulfilling your merchandise it is similar to the regular fulfillment process in functionality. However, there are a few rules and processes that you must keep in mind when you fulfill your merchandise:
- Fulfillment only occurs from the Primary Warehouse. If you sell an item and it is stored in your Secondary Warehouse it will be displayed in red on the fulfillment window and you will be unable to fulfill the order until you either transfer the item from your Secondary Warehouse or complete a new item order for the product and receive it into the Primary Warehouse.
- After fulfillment, new Activity Types are recorded on the Primary Warehouse’s Products child form just as when products are received and transferred to the warehouse.
- When cancellations or returns occur, you must manually enter some of the inventory adjustments required with your warehouse.
Each of these concepts are illustrated below.
Before you run the fulfillment process, you may find that some of your customers have inventory in their Shopping Carts that you can use to fulfill actual paid orders. This is accomplished by using the Clear Merchandise Products from Carts button on the Miscellaneous Actions Group Item from CRM and/or Accounting module(s).
Clicking this button will prompt a window that will show you exactly how many products are currently placed in Shopping Carts but have not been purchased.
Tip: It is suggested that you use this button before you run fulfillment each time so that you have an accurate representation of your inventory.
Follow the steps outlined in the Processing Merchandise Fulfillment help topic for instructions on how to access the Merchandise Fulfillment process.
You may fulfill by the following:
- Customer Name
- Product Name
- Invoice Date Range
Note: Open and closed invoices may be fulfilled. Open orders will not be fulfilled and will not show up in the Merchandise Fulfillment window.
Notice in the image below that an invoice date range has been specified so that all invoices from June 1 - June 15 will be fulfilled. (Obtained by entering a date range and clicking the Find Purchases button)
In the example, only three items are checked and able to be fulfilled; the top merchandise item (in red) specifies that one record or customer has requested the item, a quantity of 1 has been ordered, but 0 products are in inventory.
As mentioned, you may only fulfill merchandise if it is available in the Primary Warehouse. Therefore, the product will need to be ordered or transferred from the Secondary Warehouse (if it is contained there in storage) before it can be fulfilled. If you click the Fulfill button on this screen, only the second and third items on the list will be fulfilled.
Further, you may only fulfill items that have a quantity less than the inventory available. In other words the quantity [sold] must be < the inventory [available] or you will not be able to fulfill the item. Those line items are in red as shown in the image above.
You also have the option to select the Show Details check box.
Selecting the Show Details check box and then clicking the Find Purchases button again will enable you to see the details of all product purchases. This means that should an item be out-of-stock or on back order, for example, you will be able to contact the appropriate people.
As mentioned, once a product has been fulfilled, the Primary Warehouse will reflect the fulfillment under the Products child form as well with a new Activity Type entry, seen below.
Notice that the Quantity of the warehouse shows 96 left after the 4 units have been fulfilled above (there were 100 units available prior to fulfillment.)
Once fulfillment has been completed, you may run a Cost Of Goods Sold Report report.