When
dealing with inventory, there are many ways you can manage inventory and
communicate information about it to customers.
Inventory consists of the products you have available to sell. Review these scenarios,
which illustrate how to use or extend the SiteGenesis application to track
product stock levels, when considering your Salesforce B2C Commerce inventory
implementation:
Note: These models generally assume that you aren’t using Salesforce Omnichannel Inventory.
Many of their details don’t apply to implementations that use Omnichannel Inventory.
| Model Name |
Description |
| Model
1 |
Consider all products permanently in
stock. |
| Model
2 |
Some products have inventory records that
control their availability. Other products without inventory
records are considered to be permanently in stock. |
| Model
3 |
All products are assumed to have inventory
records. A front-end system frequently updates stock levels. There
is no attempt to track inventory availability in
B2C Commerce. |
| Model
4 |
All products are assumed to have inventory
records. B2C Commerce maintains stock levels for product display,
cart display, and checkout. |
| Model
5 |
B2C Commerce maintains stock levels for product
display and checkout. B2C Commerce calls the external inventory
system at add-to-cart for a real-time stock level check. |
| Model
6 |
B2C Commerce maintains stock levels for product
display and cart display. B2C Commerce calls the external inventory
system at checkout for a real-time stock level check. |
After reviewing these scenarios, answer the
following questions and plan your inventory strategy.
- Do you maintain inventory levels?
If no:
- Do you want to treat all products as
always available? Refer to Model 1 - No Product
Records
- Do you want to treat individual
products as always available? Refer to Model 2 -
Inventory Information for Some Products
If yes:
- What information can your Inventory
Management System transmit to B2C Commerce?
- Consider models 2 through 5.
- Do you support backorder or pre-order?
If no:
- How to you want to handle these
orders? Refer to Model 3 -
B2C Commerce Doesn't Calculate ATS Values and Model 4 - B2C Commerce Calculates ATS Values
- What information does your Order
Management System require?
If yes, consider models 2 through
5.
- Do you support an in stock date?
If no:
- Do you want to treat all products as
always available? Refer to Model 1 - No Product
Records
- Do you want to treat individual
products as always available? Refer to Model 2 -
Inventory Information for Some Products
If yes, consider models 2 through
5.
- Can you support real-time stock level
checks?
If yes:
- To check at Add-to-Cart, refer to
Model 5 -
Real-Time Inventory Availability At Add-to-Cart
- To check at Checkout, refer to Model 6 -
Real-Time Inventory Availability At Checkout
- Do you want to take a product off-line when
out of stock?
- If yes, refer to Common
Implementations and Customizations
- If no, no changes are required.
- How do you treat secondary products in a
bundle? Refer to Updating Stock
Levels
- When the primary product becomes
unavailable?
- When the stock level of the primary
product is incremented or decremented?
- How do you want to show unavailable
products on category pages?
- Can you support partial inventory updates?
If yes, how often do you want to run them?
- How often do you want to run full inventory
updates?
- Do you support bundled products? If yes,
how do you structure order information that you transmit back to
the order management system?