Inventory Management Systems often hold the current stock information, with some being a little bit more clever than others, taking into consideration outstanding sales orders.
The CRM provides 3 modes for stock calculations:
Disabled - Does not calculate available stock.
Standard - Takes the available figure directly from the integrated Inventory Management System.
Advanced - The CRM provides configuration options and looks at more information to calculate a more accurate picture of stock availability.
Standard
The imports run every 15 minutes* to bring in the latest stock figures from the connected Inventory Management System. The CRM will show a different figure in the following scenario:
Confirmed orders awaiting processing into the connected Inventory Management System
Quotes that have stock reserved, and have not expired
In both these scenarios, the "Available" figure will subtract quantities on those Quotes/Orders to avoid overselling. When a Quote with reserved stock goes past its quote expiry, the "Available" figure will update overnight as the date changes.
Advanced
The CRM advanced calculation includes the following features:
Combine stock levels from multiple warehouses/locations into a single figure. Warehouse/locations are often used to segregate stock for reasons including "Display Stock", "Stock in a sales person's vehicle", "Stock still being manufactured", "Stock reserved for a specific sales channel" and "Stock awaiting customs processing". In these scenarios, you want to combine the locations that can be sold freely.
Dynamically calculate a delivery schedule based on current stock and incoming stock from suppliers.
Highlight pre-season order predictions in available stock.
Run reports of availability, current stock, over committed and total known future stock.
Apply a "Turnaround Time" when receiving POs from suppliers. It's unlikely that you can actually guarantee delivery of items to your customers on the day when a supplier is due to deliver the stock to your warehouse, so this "Turnaround Time" allows you to add a number of days to each PO to say when a customer could actually get the stock delivered.
Specify how to handle late shipments from suppliers. Sometimes, deliveries are delayed for various reasons, so rather than just assuming you'll get the stock ASAP, you can choose whether to "Ignore the stock", effectively assuming it's not going to arrive, or show the arrival date as either today or a number of days into the future. This allows you to better handle the uncertainty with late deliveries. When you have a better picture of when the delivery is due to arrive, you should update the PO in your Inventory Management System, and that will filter through automatically to the CRM.
The feature relies on the availability of purchase order records in the CRM which is not available for every Inventory Management System. If you're interested in this feature, please get in contact with our Customer Success team who will help you get it set up.
Handling large orders, orders becoming due in the future & items low/out of stock
The CRM has options available to handle large orders, or stock that's either low or out of stock. You can choose to either allow overselling, at which point the original requested figure will go onto the Quote as requested. If however you choose to prevent overselling, the value requested will be truncated to the number available, and in cases whether there is no stock, the line will not be added to the Quote.
When using the advanced stock calculations, you can see what stock is available at different dates in the future, and the can automatically define a delivery schedule for when the customer can get the stock they requested. For example, if a customer orders x100 of a specific stock item, but you only have x10 in stock now, with x50 arriving next week and x50 the week after, they cannot get all 100 today. You could just change the due date to 2 weeks, however, in many cases, the customer would like to get the stock as you receive it from your suppliers. The CRM would create a schedule for the above example as x10 available ASAP, x50 next week, and the final x40 the week after.
In a similar scenario, using the same stock availability as above, where a customer would like x100 but doesn't require it for a few weeks, the CRM can handle this better. In a traditional calculation, the stock would be reserved immediately, meaning that when the next customer calls up wanting x5 ASAP, the stock figure would show the product as "Out of stock", next available in 2 weeks. With the CRM advanced calculations, it'll reserve stock based on when stock is due to arrive, utilising the new stock arriving closest to the customer's due date. In this scenario, because the CRM knows that there are 2 deliveries equalling x100 arriving prior to their due date, it can leave the current stock figure of x10 as available. When the second customer phones up and requests x5, they'll be able to get the stock delivered, and you can be confident you haven't over-committed.
Visibility in the CRM
Here are a few screenshots of where CRM users can view stock levels for product items within the CRM.
Adding Products to Quotation/Sales Orders
Viewing More Information about Quote Line
Stock Levels Page on Product Item
