Product Inventory Reserves

Overview

Product Inventory Reserves are a key factor in keeping accurate track of your inventory in Sellercloud, as well as preventing overselling. They are product quantities deducted from the aggregate inventory of your SKUs, while the items are still in your physical warehouse.
There are two types of inventory reserves in Sellercloud:

System-Generated Inventory Reserves – also referred to as Automatic Reserves, are generated by Sellercloud as a result of any process that involves shipping inventory out of a warehouse.

Manual Product Inventory Reserves – this is inventory that you can manually set aside for channels or customers. A manual reserve has a specified quantity and a custom active time period. Sellercloud will prioritize incoming orders inventory deductions from the reserved amount.

Automatic Inventory Reserves

Sellercloud generates Automatic Inventory Reserves for all planned inventory changes, where the movement is not instantaneous. Sales Orders are the most common example: whenever a paid order is created via a plugin, core integration, or manually, Sellercloud automatically deducts the ordered quantity from your Sellable Inventory while the physical quantity remains unchanged. This is done in order to ensure that we do not send the unshipped quantity to any sales channels. Order reserves are released when you ship the order or if you cancel, void, or delete the order, in which case the reserve is released back into the aggregate quantity.

The system creates system-generated reserves in several other cases:

• Pending Order Reserves – These are only available for Amazon, eBay, Magento, and Shopify. Pending order reserves are created when an order is authorized or charged on the sales channel before it is imported into Sellercloud.
• FBA Inbound Shipments – If you create FBA Inbound Shipments in Sellercloud to later export them to Amazon, the product quantities you add to the shipment will be reserved. This functionality is controlled by Client Settings.
• WFS Shipment Plans – Similar to FBA, adding products to a WFS Shipment Plan in Sellercloud can also reserve the planned quantities. Ensure the necessary Client Settings are enabled.
• Warehouse Inventory Transfers – This specific reserve type works by only temporarily changing the transferred quantity to unsellable. This ensures that inventory is not allocated to any orders or shipments while it is being moved. Once the transfer is completed, the inventory will become sellable again, but in the new warehouse.
• Credit Memos – Similar to sales orders, credit memos require you to ship inventory out of your warehouse. Adding products to this type of Purchase order will result in an automatic reserve.

Automated Inventory Reserves ensure dynamic updates to the available stock and, therefore, are crucial in preventing overselling. You can see all current reserves on the Inventory Movements page in the product’s Toolbox.

Manual Inventory Reserves

Manual Inventory Reserves are created specifically for a channel or a customer and have a pre-defined active time period. For the duration, the selected quantity is deducted from your overall sellable inventory. Once the designated time period concludes or the reserved quantity is depleted, the inventory reserve becomes inactive, and the quantity is returned to the overall inventory.

While the Reserve is active, Sellercloud prioritizes its quantity for sales orders from the selected channel or to the specified customer.

Create Manual Inventory Reserves

With Sellercloud, you can create Individual and Bulk Inventory Reserves.

Individually

To reserve inventory of individual products:

1. Navigate to Inventory > Manage Inventory and open your product.
2. From the Toolbox, select Manual Reserves. From this page, you can also edit existing product reserves.
3. Click on Add New Reserve.
4. Configure the required fields:
   1. Warehouse – The warehouse from which the inventory should be reserved.
   2. Select Reserve Type from the dropdown menu:
      1. If you choose Channel, select the channel Order Source for which you are reserving. Orders coming in for that channel will first be deducted from the available reserve instead of the sellable inventory.
      2. If you chose Customer, enter the ID of the customer for whom you are reserving the products. Orders for this customer will be deducted from the reserved quantity.
      3. Quantity – The quantity amount to be reserved.
      4. Start Date – The date when the quantity will be put in reserve. 
      5. End Date – The date when the unused reserved quantity will return to the inventory.
5. Once done, click Save.

In Bulk

You have the option to create product reserves in bulk via a file import:

1. Navigate to Inventory > Import Product Info and select Import Manual Reserves.
2. Click on the Download template button and an Excel file will be downloaded.
3. Populate the template columns:
   1. ReserveID — Leave this field empty when creating a new reserve and the system will generate the new Reserve ID.
   2. ProductID (required) — The product for which you want to reserve inventory. Write the product ID in separate rows to create multiple reserve entries for the same SKU.
   3. WarehouseName (required) — The warehouse from which the inventory should be reserved.
   4. StartDate (required) — The date when the quantity will be put in reserve (MM/DD/YY).
   5. EndDate (required) — The date when the unused reserved quantity will return to the inventory (MM/DD/YY).
   6. ReserveType (required) — Enter 0 or Customer value for a customer reserve type and 1 or Channel for a channel reserve type. Based on this column, fill in either CustomerID (column G) or OrderSource (column H). 
   7. CustomerID (required) — The customer for whom the reserved inventory is intended. Populate this field either with CustomerID or with the customer’s email address. Leave empty if the corresponding Reserve type is Channel.
   8. OrderSource (required) — The channel name for which you reserve the product. Leave empty if the corresponding Reserve type is Customer.
   9. Quantity (required) — The quantity amount to be reserved.
   10. _ACTION_ — Leave empty when creating a new reserve. If you want to delete an existing reserve, enter DELETE and a Reserve ID in the Reserve ID column.
4. Navigate back to Import Products Manual Reserves, click on the Choose File field to upload your template, and click Upload Manual Reserves.

A Queued job will be generated, from which you can monitor the status of the import. Once completed, the reserve will be created in Sellercloud.

Update Inventory Reserves

If required, you can update existing reserves from the product’s Manual Reserves page and via a file.

Individually

From a product’s Manual Reserves page, you can update its existing reserves:

1. Navigate to Inventory > Manage Inventory and select the needed product.
2. From the Toolbox, choose Manual Reserves.
3. Click on the Edit button next to the Manual Reserve that you intend to update.
4. Configure the available options:
   1. Warehouse – Select the warehouse from which the inventory should be reserved.
   2. Reserve Type – Choose from the dropdown:
      1. Order Source – If chosen, select the channel Order Source for which you are reserving. Orders coming in for that channel will first be deducted from the available reserve instead of the sellable inventory.
      2. Customer – If chosen, enter the ID of the customer for whom you are reserving the products. Orders for this customer will be deducted from the reserved quantity.
   3. Quantity – Update the reserved inventory quantity.
   4. Start Date – The date when the quantity will be put in reserve.
   5. End Date – The date when the unused reserved quantity will return to the inventory.
5. Once done, click Save.
6. You can delete each product Reserve entry by selecting the required checkbox, choosing Delete from the Select Action dropdown menu and clicking Go.

In Bulk

You can utilize a file to update one or several products’ reserves:

1. Navigate to Inventory > Manage Inventory and search for the desired products.
2. From the Select Action dropdown, choose Export Manual Reserves and click Go.
3. Select the desired Export File Format from the dropdown menu (either TAB Delimited, CSV, or Excel) and click Export File.
4. A Queued job will be generated, from which you can monitor the status of the export. Once completed, open the finished job and click on the Output File link.
5. Open the downloaded file, change the Quantity as desired, and delete the RemainingReserved column.
6. Once done, navigate to Inventory > Import Product Info and select Import Products Manual Reserves. 
7. Upload the saved file and click on the Upload Manual Reserves.

A Queued job will be generated, from which you can monitor the status of the import. Once completed, the reserve/s will be updated.

Schedule Reserves Export

For periodic reserves evaluations, you can schedule an export with existing product reserves:

1. Navigate to Settings > Select a company and from its Toolbox, choose Schedule Tasks.
2. From the New Task Type dropdown, select the Export General as a Task Type and click Go.
3. On the following page, populate the below details:
   1. Job Subtype – Select Product Manual Reserves from the dropdown.
   2. Task Name – Add a task title.
   3. Task Type – Select Export General from the dropdown.
   4. Start Time – Choose the task’s start time.
   5. Recurrence – Determine the occurring schedule for your task.
4. Configure the rest of the Export Task details as required.
5. Once done with the task configuration, check the Scheduled Enabled box and Save the task.

Related Client Settings

Here is a list of related Client Settings:

• Enable Product Manual Reserve – When enabled, this setting allows you to create inventory reserves manually.

• Show Reserved Qty Column in Manage Inventory Grid – Enable this setting to display the products’ reserved quantity in the Manage Inventory grid. 

• Auto Reserve when adding Product to FBA and WFS Shipment – Enable this setting to allow the generation of Automatic Inventory Reserves, when adding products for FBA and WFS Shipments.

• Auto Reserve when adding kit components to FBA and WFS Shipment – Enable this setting to allow the generation of Automatic Inventory Reserves, when adding kit components for FBA and WFS Shipments.

• Enable Warehouse Inventory Transfer Request Reserves – When enabled, Sellercloud will reserve the inventory of products you have added to the request regardless of the transfer status.

• Enable Warehouse Inventory Transfer Request Reserves Exclude Pending Transfer Status – If enabled, Sellercloud will reserve the inventory of products you have added to the warehouse transfer for all statuses except for Pending. This setting requires Enable Warehouse Inventory Transfer Request Reserves to also be enabled.

• Predictive Restocking: Do not include Reserved in FBA Available Qty – When enabled, this setting excludes FBA Reserves from the FBA Available quantity for Predictive Restocking calculations.

• Predictive Restocking: Consider FC Transfer and FC Processing as reserved – If enabled, Sellercloud will include FC Processing and FC Transfer quantities as Reserved quantity rather than Available quantity.
• Download FBA Reserved Inventory Breakdown – If this setting and Always Consider FBA Total Supply Quantity are enabled, Sellercloud will download the FBA transfers and reserves from the FBA Manage Inventory report, include them in the physical quantity imported, then the reserved quantity will be deducted from your available inventory. Such FBA reserves and transfers in the Inventory Movement of a product.

To locate the above settings:

1. Navigate to Settings > Client Settings.
2. Search for the respective setting and once configured, click Save.