Aftermarket Catalog Settings - Inventory Rules

Automated inventory; the lifeblood of any eCommerce business, fully automated by PSS! Once configured these rules will tell PSS how to handle the inventory that we are pulling from each of the distributor warehouses. Here you will decide the price range of products that you want to drop-ship and/or, assign the number of days that product will take to get from the distributor to you.

PSS Home Page > Settings > Inventory Rules

Inventory Aggregation

PSS combines inventory from multiple distributors for each unique product. This is to help reduce duplicate listings and allow for listings to remain active by aggregating multiple inventory sources into a single listing. We do this by combining inventory for products recognized as having the same Brand and MPN values.

Key Definitions

Lead Time - The number of days that you need to get tracking into the marketplace, or the number of days that product takes to get to your shop before you are going to send it to the buyer. To determine the lead time we recommend visiting UPS or FedEx to calculate the time from the distributor warehouse zip code to your zip code. UPS Time & Cost Estimator.
Drop-ship Cutoff - The dollar amount that you want to start drop-shipping at. PSS will issue a 1 day lead time for all product that is over the Drop Ship Cutoff dollar amount.
Exclude Warehouse - When this box is checked the warehouse simply will not be included in inventory calculations. Uncheck the box if you wish to utilize the warehouse. The default for new accounts is to exclude all warehouses so you will need to uncheck these boxes.

Examples and Explanations

Example #1: Most dealers don't want to pay the fee to have a $6.00 valve stem seal drop-shipped so they will set a Drop Ship Cutoff to ensure that cheaper product is shipped to them before going to the buyer. If you had a Drop Ship Cutoff of $50.00, this $6.00 valve stem seal would fall under the cutoff and the listing would tell the buyer that you will not have shipping into eBay for the number of days you have entered into the Lead Time field for that warehouse.

Example #2: If a dealer only wants to drop ship product they would set the dropship cutoff to one dollar. From there the Lead Time field is obsolete because everything is above the dropship cutoff. Typically someone in this boat would want to avoid listing cheaper products; thus they would go to their Marketplace Settings and raise the Marketplace Buffer to something like $20 or $30.

Example #3: If you set Western Power Sports, CA warehouse to Dropship Cutoff of $150 this means that all product over $150 is going to get a lead time of 1. This means that you have 1 day to get tracking into your marketplace. For the product under $150 the marketplace is going to get the Lead Time that you input in the Lead Time column.

Example #4: Some distributors do not drop-ship (Parts Unlimited for some). This means that you will want a high drop-ship cutoff; one that will ensure all product gets assigned the proper lead time. To disable drop shipping you simply set the dropship cutoff to $9,999. From here just make sure that your lead times are accurate based on how many days the product takes to get to you. UPS Time & Cost Estimator.

How should I set my Inventory Rules?

Everyone has their own way of doing things and each dealer has their own unique set of circumstances so, there is no ultimate way to configure this. We offer the following words of wisdom:

Don't set all your Lead Times to the same value across the board. Take the time to determine how long the product takes to get to you from each warehouse.
Leverage on the nearby warehouses with 1-2 day Lead Times.
You can always start conservative and then start taking more risk once you see how fulfillment on your listings goes for the first month.
These marketplaces are fairly competitive and a lot of buyers look for fast shipping these days. Make sure that a portion of your listings are eligible for drop ship or a 1 day lead time.
If you only want to drop-ship just set all of your drop-ship cutoffs to $1.00. Done.