Item fulfillment options

Order fulfillment process involves all the steps from point of sales inquiry to delivery of an item to the customer.

Fulfillment options can be defined at the item or SKU level. You can define the available delivery method of a specific item at a node.

When a customer places an order, they can decide the manner in which the order must be fulfilled. Alternatively, customers can provide the preferred fulfillment option after order confirmation. For example, a customer might want an item to be shipped to a location or might choose to pick up the item at a store. Sometimes, the item that is ordered by the customer might not be available to be shipped, but is available at a store. Similarly, the item might not be available at a store but can be shipped from a different location. In such situations, the fulfillment options can be configured as needed.

With fulfillment options, the inventory availability picture can be enabled or disabled for an item at a specific hierarchy. Inventory Visibility uses the defined hierarchy to determine which fulfillment option to use, with the most detailed level of the hierarchy that best matches the request that is considered having the highest precedence. If a fulfillment option is not defined at a specific level, the next level in the hierarchy that is less specific is used.

You can configure the following fulfillment options for an item.
  • Items with variation
    • Items with variation-DeliveryMethod
    • Items with variation-shipNode
    • Items with variation-shipNode-DeliveryMethod
  • Item
    • Item-DeliveryMethod
    • Item-shipNode
    • Item-shipNode-DeliveryMethod

For example, consider an item, T-Shirt with variations. The associated child items are Small, Medium, and Large T-Shirts. For this item, the SHP (ship from store) delivery method is used and Matrix-Store-001 is the ship node from where the item is shipped. The following table illustrates the fulfillment option configuration for the item, ship node, and delivery method combination based on the hierarchy, and whether availability is determined for each item or SKU.

Table 1. Fulfillment option configurations
Hierarchy Item or SKU Fulfillment options Availability at the specified hierarchy
Item with variations T-Shirt True Availability picture
Item with variations – Delivery Method T-Shirt + SHP Undefined Availability picture
Item with variations – Ship Node T-Shirt + Matrix-Store-001 False 0
Item with variations – Ship Node – Delivery Method T-Shirt + Matrix-Store-001 + SHP Undefined 0
SKU Medium T-shirt Undefined 0
SKU – Delivery Method Medium T-Shirt + SHP True Availability picture
SKU – Ship Node Medium T-Shirt + Matrix-Store-001 True Availability picture
SKU – Ship Node – Delivery Method Medium T-Shirt + Matrix-Store-001 + SHP Undefined Availability picture