Ship from primary

How to fulfill your orders shipping from the primary stock location

Problem

You have an order containing several SKUs, whose stock is available in different locations and — possibly — belongs to multiple shipping categories. You want to create the shipments just from your primary stock location and perform stock transfers from the secondary locations to the primary one in case the latter cannot fulfill all the order's line items.

Solution

You need to use the ship from primary strategy. To do that, check the related option in the admin UI or send a PATCH request to the inventory_models/:id endpoint, setting the strategy attribute accordingly.

Example

The following request updates the strategy for the inventory model identified by the "BwAezhyOQw" ID:

curl -g -X PATCH \
  'http://yourdomain.commercelayer.io/api/inventory_models/BwAezhyOQw' \
  -H 'Accept: application/vnd.api+json' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer your-access-token' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/vnd.api+json' \
  -d '{
  "data": {
    "type": "inventory_modeld",
    "id": "BwAezhyOQw",
    "attributes": {
      "strategy": "ship_from_primary"
    }
  }
}'

On success, the API responds with a 200 OK status code, returning the updated inventory model object:

{
  "data": {
    "id": "BwAezhyOQw",
    "type": "inventory_models",
    "links": {
      "self": "https://yourdomain.commercelayer.io/api/inventory_models/BwAezhyOQw"
    },
    "attributes": {
      "name": "EU Inventory Model",
      "strategy": "ship_from_primary",
      "stock_locations_cutoff": 3,
      "created_at": "2018-01-01T12:00:00.000Z",
      "updated_at": "2018-01-01T12:00:00.000Z",
      "reference": "ANY-EXTERNAL-REFEFERNCE",
      "reference_origin": "ANY-EXTERNAL-REFEFERNCE-ORIGIN",
      "metadata": {
        "foo": "bar"
      }
    },
    "relationships": {
      "inventory_stock_locations": {
        "links": {
          "self": "https://yourdomain.commercelayer.io/api/inventory_models/xYZkjABcde/relationships/inventory_stock_locations",
          "related": "https://yourdomain.commercelayer.io/api/inventory_models/xYZkjABcde/inventory_stock_locations"
        }
      },
      "inventory_return_locations": {
        "links": {
          "self": "https://yourdomain.commercelayer.io/api/inventory_models/xYZkjABcde/relationships/inventory_return_locations",
          "related": "https://yourdomain.commercelayer.io/api/inventory_models/xYZkjABcde/inventory_return_locations"
        }
      },
      "attachments": {
        "links": {
          "self": "https://yourdomain.commercelayer.io/api/inventory_models/xYZkjABcde/relationships/attachments",
          "related": "https://yourdomain.commercelayer.io/api/inventory_models/xYZkjABcde/attachments"
        }
      }
    },
    "meta": {
      "mode": "test"
    }
  }
}

How it works

This inventory strategy affects the creation of the resources involved in the process by the following logic.

Shipments

Only the primary stock location is considered for shipment creation.

Stocks transfers

If the primary stock location can fulfill all the SKUs associated with the order, no stock transfer is created. Otherwise, one or more stock transfers are created from the secondary locations to the primary one. Each stock transfer creates a stock line item once completed.

Stock line items

Only the SKUs fulfilled by the primary stock location generate stock line items. Each of the other SKUs generates a stock transfer.

Shipping categories

In case the order contains SKUs belonging to different shipping categories, a shipment is created from the primary stock location for each shipping category. As for the rest, the logic still works as described above.

Additional notes

Do not ship SKU

If an SKU is marked with the do_not_ship flag, no shipment is generated for it. The necessary stock line items and stock transfers are created anyway.

This option still tracks inventory.

Do not track SKU

If an SKU is marked with the do_not_track flag, no stock transfer is generated for it. Stock line items are still created but they aren't associated with any stock item so that the stock isn't decremented/incremented on order placement/cancellation.

This option still generates shipments.