Inventory
Inventory across every location and warehouse, without counting anything twice.
Your shelf stock and print on demand sit in the same catalog. Two warehouses show as two sources on one listing. The count a store shows is the count that is left, across every store selling from that stock, and a unit is held the moment it lands in a cart. Each line of an order goes to the warehouse or floor that should make it. Nobody counts, forwards or re-keys anything.
Stock, reservations, routing and shipments write to the same ledger as the orders.
| Variant | East | West | Held | Avail. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polo, navy, M | 240 | 180 | 12 | 408 |
| Polo, navy, L | 96 | 210 | 30 | 276 |
| Hoodie, gray, XL | 0 | 44 | 4 | 40 |
| Cap, black, one size | 310 | 260 | 10 | 560 |
One catalog, two kinds of product
Stock on the shelf and print on demand sell side by side.
Most systems make you choose between selling what is in the warehouse and selling what gets decorated on order. Here the two sit on the same listing. Your own stock is a source beside the suppliers. Quantities move as orders land, and a store can show the count or hide it.
Managed stock
Counts per variant, per warehouse. Low-stock thresholds warn before you are out. Stock held for one account sells to that account only.
Print on demand beside it
No count to keep. The line routes to your press, your decorator or a supplier when the order lands. The buyer sees one cart and one receipt.
Reservations on a fixed run
A fundraiser or pop-up with a set number of jerseys. The unit is held the moment it is in the cart and released if the buyer walks.
Multi-warehouse
Every warehouse, live on every store.
A location that holds stock in two cities has one listing with two sources. An order pulls from the warehouse nearest the buyer that has the unit, and splits when it must. The label prints where the picking happens. Counts roll up per warehouse and in total.
Network hold
A window before the order reaches a floor. Long enough for the artwork question or the credit check. Hold one line, keep the rest moving. Set it per network, location or store.
Routing
Rules by technique, product, region and stock. Your own presses first, a decorator for what your floor cannot make, a supplier direct for hard goods. A line a route cannot take is held with a reason, never dropped.
Split shipments
Lines from two warehouses or two floors ship from where they are. The buyer sees every tracking number on one order, box by box. Each floor prints its own packing slip under the store's name.
What used to go wrong
Every one of these ends with someone writing an apology.
Two stores showed the same unit. Both buyers paid. One got a refund email and did not come back.
The other sat full because the store only knew about one of them. Freight went up.
The store said yes. The shelf said no. Someone called the buyer to offer a large instead.
A person read every order and sent the embroidery to one floor and the tumblers to a supplier. On a busy day one line got missed.
By the time a franchisee noticed, the blanks were pulled. The cancellation call went to the decorator.
Two boxes from two places, one tracking number in the email. The buyer wrote in twice.
Kept by one person who knew what was on the shelf. When that person was out, so was the count.
"The ability to clean up the back end portion of it for us would be a big deal."Owner, apparel and promo distributor on three back-office systems, discovery call
Who sees what
A location sees its shelf. Headquarters sees every shelf.
A location runs its own warehouses, stock accounts and holds. The network sets the routing rules the locations inherit and sees every count rolled up. Nobody's numbers are typed into anybody else's system.
| The location sees | Headquarters sees | |
|---|---|---|
| Counts | Its own warehouses, per variant, available and held | Every warehouse in the network, per location and in total |
| Reservations | What is held on its stores and for how long | Holds across the network, so a fixed run is never oversold anywhere |
| Routing | Its own floor preferred where the agreement allows | The rules every store inherits, and every line's route |
| Network hold | Its own window, its own held lines, with reasons | Every held line before it reaches a floor |
| Low stock | A warning on its own variants before it is out | Which locations are running low on which product, before the reorder |
The work
What you never handle, and what you set once.
What you never handle
- The count on any store. It moves when the order lands and when the cart is abandoned.
- Which warehouse ships which line. The nearest one that has it does.
- Which floor decorates what. The routing rules decide.
- The pick ticket. It matches what the store promised because it came from the same record.
What you set once
- Your warehouses, and which stores sell from which stock.
- The reservation window, the low-stock threshold, and whether a store shows the count.
- Routing rules by technique, product and region, inherited by every store.
- The network hold window, per network, location or store.