Shipment and Order Management
DEVELOP User Guide - This guide provides MSI Develop Branch/Active Development merchant information on Magento Multi Source Inventory (MSI) features and project.
MSI supports order management through Magento to update inventory for invoices, shipments, refunds, and cancellations. The following information details how to use the Source Selection Algorithm(SSA) for shipment recommendations and processes for managing and shipping your orders.
- MSI supported orders
- Order Status and Reservations
- SSA at Shipment
- Rerun SSA and ship
- Override SSA recommendations and ship
- Refund orders and update inventory
- Cancel unshipped orders
For additional information on order management including processing orders, invoices, and shipments, see the Magento User Guide.
MSI supports single orders and multiaddress orders without additional configurations, out-of-the-box. As customers or your staff enter orders, MSI tracks inventory using reservations against the salable quantity, deducting from inventory quantity when invoicing and shipping the products.
For multiaddress orders, a series of single orders are generated in Magento grouped according to the multiple destination addresses. During checkout, customers select each set of products associated per address during checkout generates as single orders according to the destination address. Each order includes the products associated per address.
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| Multi Address Shipping - MultiShipping |
MSI manages inventory for these multiaddress orders exactly like single orders, allowing for SSA or overrides during shipment, partial shipments, canceling orders, and refunding with stock updates. See the following sections for details.
The Source Selection Algorithm provides recommendations for partial and full shipments. You can access the SSA when creating shipment invoices for an order. Through the Ship page, run the Priority algorithm at any time to determine the best options for matching ordered quantities and available sources. The system supports shipping a complete order from one source and breaking the order into multiple partial shipments across multiple sources. You can access these options for immediate fulfillment and staggered shipments to send smaller amounts over a period of time.
To complete and ship an order, it must have completed payment and be invoiced. At this time, you can rerun the SSA for recommendations and ship from one or more sources, or override the SSA recommendations with manually set sources and quantities to fulfill shipment.
- We recommend rerunning the SSA to review recommendations for every shipment.
- If you want to change the selections, you can override with manual source deductions.
Before proceeding to shipment, you should rerun the SSA. You can run the algorithm and complete shipping for entire orders or partially for sending smaller amounts over many shipments. If you manually change the deductions and rerun SSA, it clears your changes and presents the latest best matches according to the algorithm.
When you rerun SSA, it checks the current quantities per source, weighing the best deductions in inventory quantities based on the selected algorithm. The initial SSA algorithm determines shipments based on source priority configured on the stock. Additional algorithms will be available in later releases, or through custom code and extensions.
Note: Ensure the order has completed payment and is invoiced prior to shipping.
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On the Admin sidebar, tap Sales. Then, choose Orders.
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Tap the View link for an active order.
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Tap Ship on the upper menu bar. The ordered products, quantities, sources, and SSA options display.
Source Selection Shipment in an Order -
Tap Source Selection Algorithm to rerun and review recommendations. At this time, the down-arrow offers Source Priority, recommending shipment according to the source priority list per stock.
Later releases will include additional algorithm options in the drop-arrow list.
Source Selection Rerun SSA -
The Items Ordered table updates with recommended amounts to deduct.
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For the Select a Source to Ship from, select a Source from the drop-down menu matching the recommendation.
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Tap Proceed to Shipment. Review and complete shipment. The Inventory section displays the source, products shipping, total ordered quantity, and quantity to ship.
MSI Shipping Inventory information -
Tap Submit Shipment to complete.
If not enough products are available from one source, you will need to repeat this process to ship additional products per source. As you enter additional shipments, the information includes the current total shipped.
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| MSI Shipping Inventory information for multiple shipments |
You can manually override and set each source and quantity of products in an order directly through the Ship option. This option is helpful when you want to control every product deduction or when fulfilling partial shipments.
When selected, the Source Selection page displays options for selecting a source to ship from, the ordered quantity of product(s), and the currently available sources and salable quantities. Customers are not charged additional amounts when you override and modify quantities per source.
Note: Ensure the order has completed payment and is invoiced prior to shipping.
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On the Admin sidebar, tap Sales. Then, choose Orders.
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Tap the View link for an active order (or your test order).
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Tap Ship on the upper menu bar. The ordered products, quantities, sources, and SSA options display.
Source Selection Shipment in an Order -
For the Select a Source to Ship from, select a Source from the drop-down menu. The Qty to Deduct field is enabled to enter the amount to ship.
For this example, the Texas Warehouse is selected with 20 entered. To keep an on-hand quantity, this could be changed to 10 and another warehouse selected to fulfill the order.
Quantities Selected per Source -
Tap Proceed to Shipment to initiate shipping. This overrides the SSA recommendations. The inventory reservations convert to quantity deductions against the selected sources.
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Review and complete shipment. The Inventory section displays the source, products shipping, total ordered quantity, and quantity to ship.
MSI Shipping Inventory information -
Tap Submit Shipment to complete.
If not enough products are available from one source, you will need to repeat this process to ship additional products per source. As you enter additional shipments, the information includes the current total shipped.
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| MSI Shipping Inventory information for multiple shipments |
You can refund orders (via a credit memo), either in full or in part. For more information on refund credit memos, see the Magento User Guide.
After the order is refunded, enter another credit memo to return the product quantity to the originating source:
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On the Admin sidebar tap Sales. Then, choose Orders.
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Find the completed order in the grid. Then in the Action column, click the View link to open the order.
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In the button bar at the top of the page, tap Credit Memo. The button appears only after an order is invoiced.
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Complete any additions and changes needed for handling refunds in your business.
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Tap the Return to Stock checkbox. The product quantity will return to the specific source. For example, if the product came from a warehouse in New York, the quantity adds back to that source.
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Complete the credit memo. You can verify the update in stock through the product page.
If an order has not been shipped and is cancelled, MSI automatically returns the product stock to the salable quantity. Until invoice and shipping, purchased products are reserved against the salable quantity, not deducted from the actual quantity. Invoicing and shipping converts the reservation to an inventory deduction.
Behind the scenes, MSI automatically enters a compensation reservation removing the hold on the product quantity. The quantity returns to the aggregated virtual salable quantity.