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Backorders

Table of Contents

Overview

Sellercloud can mark an order with a BackOrder status when a customer orders an item that is out of stock. This allows it to be fulfilled at a later time once inventory for that product has been replenished. This article explains several ways to help you effectively manage your backorders.

The BackOrder feature is only available if the BackOrderReCalculateService is running on your server. Contact Sellercloud Support to confirm that this service is installed. In addition, the client setting Enable BackOrder Workflow must be selected.

View BackOrders

You can search for backorders by navigating to Orders > Manage Orders > Add filter > Back Order > Choose an option from the filter’s drop-down menu > Search. This will display all backorders.The image shows the BackOrder filter

The BackOrder quantity appears on the Order Details page under the Items panel. The BackOrder quantity is adjusted and the order status is updated accordingly when inventory becomes available. Inventory is applied chronologically (i.e., older orders become updated first). If you manually change the inventory of an item, you can easily force the recalculation of one or more backorders instead of reallocating inventory or waiting for the BackOrderReCalculateService to rerun. The items shows the BackOrder quantity.

Manage BackOrders

On the Manage Orders page, from the Action menu at the lower-right corner, you have the following backorder-related actions:

  • BackOrder Reallocation — Allows you to edit the backorder quantity. This is useful when you want to reallocate an order’s backordered item to fill the backorder quantity on another order and ship it immediately. Your changes will be overwritten when the BackOrderReCalculateService re-runs based on the quantity available and the backorder-related client settings.The image shows the BackOrder Reallocation page.
  • Mark BackOrder — Marks orders as BackOrders.
  • Mark Not BackOrder — Unmarks orders as BackOrders.
  • Recalculate Backorders — Recalculates the selected backorders.

When an order comes in for an out-of-stock item, Sellercloud offers several other options for dealing with backorders:

  • Delay shipping
  • Cancel order
  • Dropship from vendor

The following order-related actions will have an impact on an order’s backorder status. When any of these occur, the backorder status and quantity is immediately determined on related orders, and other quantity adjustments will update the backorder status periodically, throughout the day if:

  • An order is split
  • An order has items added to it
  • Inventory becomes available through a PO Receive

Configure Shipbridge for BackOrders

Shipbridge has two convenient settings that help control backorders:

  • Auto move orders with backorder items to the attention tab — Moves all backorders to Shipbridge’s Requires Attention tab instead of the Unshipped tab. To enable this option, go to Menu > Customize Interface > GUI and check Auto move orders with backorder items to the attention tab.
  • Ignore backorder/requires attention orders — Hides all backorders from Shipbridge’s Scan and Ship tab when entering or scanning those orders, so you will not try to ship a backorder when you have no item(s) available in the warehouse. To enable this option, go to Menu > Options > Scan and Ship and check Ignore backorder/requires attention orders.

Below are the Client Settings that affect Sellercloud’s calculation and appearance of the backorders.

CLIENT SETTING DESCRIPTION
Consider ReplacementSKU Qty in BackOrder Calculation  If an item is out of stock, but its replacement SKU has stock, the order will not be marked as a backorder.

Don’t consider Dropship WH Qty as Available Qty for BackOrder calculation 

(enabled by default)

Excludes the quantity in a Dropship type warehouse from the backorder calculation.

You can use this when importing inventory from a vendor into a dropship-type warehouse and you don’t want this inventory to be considered as available. Instead, items are actually ordered on a PO, received, and shipped to the customer.

Include Authorized Orders In BackOrder Calculation 

(enabled by default)

 Orders with a Payment Status of Authorized are considered for calculating backorders.

Include Unpaid and Partially Paid Orders In BackOrder Calculation

(enabled by default)

 Orders with a Payment Status of Unpaid and Partially Paid are considered for calculating backorders.
Use Warehouse-Based BackOrder Calculation 

Calculates backorder per product, based on the Ship To warehouse set on the order. 

Note: This will not do the calculation for FBA, Interim, or Untested warehouse types. 
Use Payment Date Instead of Order Creation in Backorder Calculation

Payment Date, not Order Date, will be used in backorder calculations, i.e. when allocating product inventory in backorders. This happens based on the order’s payment date and not the order’s creation date
Prioritize Fully-Shippable Orders in BackOrder Calculation

This setting is useful when dealing with multiple backorders with different quantities:

  • It will allocate available quantities to the order with the minimum required quantity that can be fulfilled when possible.

  • For example, if an order for 40 items with 10 on hand and a second order for 10 comes in later, this setting will allocate quantity to the second order instead of reserving it for the first. It will try to do this for the oldest orders first. 
Include OnHold Orders In BackOrder Calculation  Orders with an Order Status of OnHold will be included in the backorder calculations.

Understanding backorders

The Backorder feature is only available if the BackOrderReCalculateService is running on your server; please contact Sellercloud Support to confirm that this service is installed. In addition, Enable BackOrder Workflow must be selected in Client Settings to use this feature. Read how to configure Backorder-related later in this topic. Sellercloud can mark an order with a BackOrder status when a customer orders an item for which you have no availability. When this happens, the backordered quantity will appear in the Order Details’ BackOrderQty column and the order is marked as BackOrder in the Order Status bar. When inventory does become available, the BackOrder Qty is adjusted and the Order Status is updated accordingly. Note that inventory is applied chronologically to orders, with quantity first becoming available to older orders. If you manually change the inventory of an item, you can easily force the recalculation of one or more Backorders instead of reallocating inventory or waiting for the BackOrderReCalculateService to rerun: On the Manage Orders page > Select orders > Action Menu > Recalculate Backorders > Go. This topic explains several ways to help you effectively manage your Backorders, including:

  • Order-related functions affecting backorders
  • Reallocating backorder quantity
  • Configuring ShipBridge for backorders
  • Related options for managing backorders

Finding backorders

  1. Open Manage Orders > Advanced Search > BackOrder dropdown field > choose Full BackOrder, Partial BackOrder, or Full or Partial BackOrder > Search.sellercloud alpha find backorders
  2. Open a Backorder from the Manage Orders page of results:
Order-related functions affecting backorders

The following order-related actions will have an impact on an order’s Backorder status. When any of these occur, the Backorder status and quantity is immediately determined on related orders, and other quantity adjustments will update the Backorder status periodically, throughout the day:

  • An order is split
  • An order has items added to it
  • Inventory becomes available though a PO Receive
Reallocating backorder quantities

To be able to ship an order immediately, there may be times when you want to reallocate an order’s backordered item to fill the backorder quantity on another order. If so, you can edit the orders’ Backorder quantities and change their Backorder statuses. Here’s how:

  1. On the Manage Orders page— select the Backorder > Action Menu > Mark BackOrder or Mark Not BackOrder > Go.
  2. There are 2 places to edit an order’s Backorder quantity:
    1. On the Order Details page— click Action Menu > Manage Backorder Reallocation > Go; or
    2. On the Manage Orders page > select the Backorder > Action Menu > Manage Backorder Reallocation > Go.
  3. On the BackOrder Reallocation page > revise the Backorder Qty field > Update.sellercloud alpha backorder reallocation

Your changes will be overwritten when the BackOrderReCalculateService re-runs, based on quantity available and Backorder-related Client Settings.

Configuring ShipBridge for backorders

ShipBridge has 2 convenient settings that help control Backorders:

  • Menu > Customize Interface > GUI > Auto move orders with backorder items to the attention tab— This moves all Backorders to ShipBridge’s Requires Attention tab instead of the Unshipped tab, so they are easily discernible as orders that are not ready to ship.
  • Menu > Options > Scan and Ship > Ignore backorder/requires attention orders— This hides all Backorders from ShipBridge’s Scan and Ship tab when entering or scanning those orders, so you will not try to ship a Backorder when you have no item(s) available in the warehouse.
Configuring Client Settings for backorders

There are a number of Client Settings that affect Sellercloud’s calculation and appearance of Backorders:

CLIENT SETTINGS DESCRIPTION
Enable BackOrder Workflow (required)
  • Must be selected for the Backorder feature to work
  • Shows BackOrder Qty and Avail Qty on the expanded Manage Orders grid
*Enabling this will deselect the setting Hide BackOrder Column in Manage Orders. It is assumed you want to see the BackOrder icon on the Manage Orders page; however, you can override this behavior by selecting it.
Hide BackOrder Column in Manage Orders Hides the BackOrder icon on the expanded Manage Orders grid and the BackOrderQty column on the Order Details page. *Selecting Enable BackOrder Workflow automatically deselects this setting
Stop Marking Orders as BackOrder while Creating Orders (enabled by default)
  • Orders will not be marked with a BackOrder status when created
  • Hides the BackOrder icon on the Manage Orders grid and the BackOrderQty column on the Order Detail page
Consider ReplacementSKU Qty in BackOrder Calculation If an item is out of stock, but its replacement SKU has stock, the order will not be marked as a backorder
Don’t consider Dropship WH Qty as Available Qty for BackOrder calculation (enabled by default)
  • Excludes the quantity in a Dropship type warehouse from the Backorder calculation
  • You can use this when importing inventory from a vendor into a dropship type warehouse and you don’t want this inventory to be considered as available. Instead, items are actually ordered on a PO, received, and shipped to the customer.
Include Authorized Orders In BackOrder Calculation (enabled by default) Orders with a Payment Status of Authorized are considered for calculating Backorders
Include Unpaid and Partially Paid Orders In BackOrder Calculation (enabled by default) Orders with a Payment Status of Unpaid and Partially Paid are considered for calculating Backorders
Use WarehouseBased Backorder Calculation Calculates Backorder per product, based on the Ship To warehouse set on the order. Note:This will not do the calculation for FBA, Interim, or Untested warehouse types.
Update BackOrder status on Order Status Change (enabled by default) Whenever the Order Status is changed to any value, the Backorder quantity is automatically recalculated
Use Payment Date Instead of Order Creation in Backorder Calculation Payment Date, not Order Date, will be used in Backorder calculations; meaning, paid Backorders will have priority over Backorders without payment
Prioritize FullyShippable Orders in Backorder Calculation
  • This setting is useful when dealing with multiple Backorders with different quantities:
    • It will allocate available quantities to the order with the minimum required quantity that can be fulfilled, when possible
    • For example, an order for 40 items with 10 on hand and a second order for 10 comes in later. This setting will allocate quantity to the second order instead of reserving it for the first. It will try to do this for the oldest orders first.
Include OnHold Orders In BackOrder Calculation Orders with an Order Status of OnHold will be included in Backorder calculations
Enable per OrderItem Based BackOrder in PickList  
Related options for managing backorders

When an order comes in for an out-of-stock item, Sellercloud offers several other options for dealing with Backorders:

  • Delaying shipping
  • Dropshipping from vendor
  • Cancelling order
  • Emailing customers— This feature lets you email a customer about a cancellation or shipping delay. You create an email template and configure emails to be automatically sent whenever a Backorder occurs:
  1. Settings > choose Email Templates. (You can also go to Company Settings > Toolbox > Email Settings > Email Templates.)
  2. Click Add New Template and create an email for an order cancellation when an item is out of stock > Save Template.
  3. Company Settings > Toolbox > Email Settings > click Email Template Assignment. Here, you assign a specific email to send when encountering a given property.
  4. Scroll down to OutOfStockInventoryNotice and choose your order cancellation template > Update Grid. This email will be sent whenever an order is marked as a BackOrder.
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