About order fulfillment
Fulfillment refers to the process of shipping one or more items in an order, to the customer. This is not applicable to in-store purchases, where products are handed over to the customer at checkout.
How order fulfillment works
When an order is placed, a fulfillment request is sent to the best
fulfillment location, based on the fulfillment configuration .
A store or a distribution center can be set up as a fulfillment location.
Distribution centers (DCs) are created when you import stock, into NewStore Omnichannel Cloud. For help with configuring the fulfillment provider URL, the address and contact information for DCs in your business, contact the support team.
For each fulfillment location, fulfillment requests are placed in a queue.
Requests are sent to fulfillment associates based on each associate's availability:
- Not available: A fulfillment associate who has not logged on, does not receive requests. Requests are only sent to fulfillment associates who are logged in.
- Cannot fulfill requests: Requests are not sent to logged-in fulfillment associates if their status indicates that they cannot fulfill requests. NewStore sends the request to the next available associate at the location.
- Can fulfill requests: Requests are sent to fulfillment associates who are logged on and ready to fulfill requests.
Fulfillment request priorities
Based on the store queue priority configured in NewStore Omnichannel Cloud, requests are displayed to associates. The priority assigned to each shipping option and the display priority defined determine if the order is displayed in the Priority or Regular queue, in Associate App.
See Stores in the API docs.
For example, Same day delivery is assigned the highest priority and
traditional delivery is assigned the next priority. An order placed at
midnight with this option is sent to a location that the routing engine
determines, even if the location is closed for business at midnight.
When associates at the location log on when the store opens, the request
is displayed on their device as a priority request that they must
fulfill before they can choose to accept regular requests.
Accepted and declined requests
You can configure a time period within which an accepted fulfillment request must be completed. For more information, contact the support team.
When a request is accepted, but is not completed within the configured
time-period, the order is marked Overdue. For example, you can
configure a 30-minute slot within which an associate must pick an item
and a 15-minute slot in which the associate must pack the items in a
request, print documents and complete the request. For help with this
configuration, contact the support team.
When a request is declined, it is sent to the next available associate at the location. If all the associates at a location decline the request, it stays in the queue for the fulfillment location, and is not rerouted.
For orders fulfilled by a DC, when an item is rejected in a
fulfillment request, the status of the item changes
to On Hold in NewStore Omnichannel Manager. However, the rejected item
is processed in NewStore Omnichannel Cloud only after all the other
items in the fulfillment request have been processed.
If a request is neither accepted nor rejected, it stays in the queue for
the location, and is not rerouted. A user with permissions to the
Sales section in NewStore Omnichannel Manager, can see the order when
the orders are filtered by Routing or Pending status. For more
information on NewStore Omnichannel Manager users, see Default roles and permissions .
Rerouted requests
When a fulfillment associate is unable to fulfill an already accepted request, the request is rerouted to the next best location, based on the fulfillment configuration.
- If the associate cannot find the item, the request is rerouted
and the
ATPfor the item is set to0at the location. - If the associate finds an item damaged, the ATP for the item at the location is reduced to exclude the damaged item. This action serves as a mechanism to report a change in the inventory. If the location has ATP for the damaged item, the request is routed to the location again immediately.
- If the associate finds partial inventory for the request, NewStore does not split the order if another location can fulfill the complete order. The complete request is rerouted to a location that has all the items in stock. If NewStore cannot find another location that meets all the routing configuration settings, the items that cannot be fulfilled at the location are rerouted to the next best location.
Disabling locations from fulfilling orders
You can disable or enable order
fulfillment in stores via NewStore Omnichannel Manager, or use an
API
to programmatically disable or enable any location from fulfilling
orders. Once a location is disabled, ATP for products at the location is
reset to 0 after some time.
The updated ATP for products is available while exporting availability data via the export API and displayed in NewStore Omnichannel Manager. However, the values calculated for stock on hand, allocations, reservations, and safety stock quantities for products at the location stay unchanged. See Exporting stock levels and About order routing .
Orders routed to the location before it was disabled are fulfilled via the usual process. Use NewStore Associate App to reject these orders if needed.
Using an external OMS to fulfill orders
In some scenarios, retailers may want to continue using a legacy order management system (OMS) for primary order fulfillment tasks, and configure NewStore as the secondary OMS for their business.
To enable or disable an external OMS for your business, use this External OMS API.
For more information, see the configuration guide .
When NewStore is the secondary OMS for your business, it provides the following features, from the perspective of order routing and fulfillment:
- Order placement and returns via NewStore Associate App. Orders placed via the app are then routed to the external OMS for fulfillment.
- Managing payments for in-store purchase orders.
- Store fulfillment and handling shipping for orders fulfilled via stores.
- Inventory management in stores, as NewStore will be the inventory master in stores configured for your business.
The external or legacy OMS is responsible for the following in your business:
ATP, order routing , order modifications, and customer support.- Rerouting rejected store fulfillment orders. See Rerouted requests .
- Handling shipping for orders fulfilled from a DC or warehouse .
- Managing payments for all order fulfillment scenarios except in-store purchases.
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