SLA-based checkout

Sterling Intelligent Promising offers Service level agreement (SLA) based checkout calculations when a shopper prefers to receive the order on either the earliest date or in the minimum number of shipments. In these cases, the shopper selects either minimize shipments or earliest delivery fulfillment options on the Order Hub UI during the checkout process.

When the user selects one of these options, the Checkout assignment API provides the SLA-based checkout calculations by default. If a shopper selects Minimize shipments as a fulfillment preference, then Sterling Intelligent Promising optimizes the order fulfillment to deliver the order in the minimum number of packages.

If the shopper selects earliest delivery as their fulfillment preference, Sterling Intelligent Promising optimizes the order fulfillment to deliver the order as soon as possible. In this case, Sterling Intelligent Promising prioritizes the carrier services that can deliver on the earliest date, even if the shipping and processing costs are higher. For more information, see the Calculate pre-purchase shipment assignments using finite capacity windows (Checkout assignment) API.

Note: Other than SLA-based promising, Sterling Intelligent Promising can also apply delivery date and shipping dates as order optimization constraints. If date-based optimization is used, the checkout calculations consider delivery date and shipping date over the number of shipments. By default, the SLA is applied as an order optimization constraint for checkout calculations in prepurchase scenarios.