When there are actions related to goods, such as purchasing and placing orders, the warehouse system and the inventory system need to cooperate with each other to complete the transmission and management of inventory data. Understanding how these two systems should cooperate will be of great help in understanding the composition of cross-border e-commerce inventory later. The following focuses on the inventory management corresponding to purchase and warehousing, order locking inventory, order cancellation unlocking inventory, outbound deduction of inventory, and inter-warehouse transfer.
1 Purchase and warehousing
If a merchant wants to sell a product on a B2C cross-border e-commerce website, he must first initiate a purchase plan. At this time, he needs to create a purchase order in the warehouse system to record which product has been purchased and how much, and which warehouse this batch of goods has been placed in. After the purchase is initiated, the purchased goods will be put into the warehouse. At this time, the warehouse system will change the corresponding quantity of goods, and at the same time, it will inform the inventory system of how many corresponding goods have been put into the warehouse, so that the inventory system can adjust the number of available goods in time.
2 Order and lock inventory
When a consumer purchases a product, the inventory system will first lock the quantity of goods and then wait for the warehouse to ship it. The inventory system will adjust the quantity of goods only after the warehouse has shipped the goods. For example, if the number of goods A purchased and put into the warehouse is 10, the inventory system will also show that the number of goods A is 10. At this time, the number of goods that the store can sell is 10. When a consumer purchases 1 item of goods A, the inventory system will first lock 1 item of goods A, indicating that 1 item has been sold. At this time, the inventory system will notify the warehouse system that the current number of goods that can be purchased is 9.
3 Unlocking inventory after order cancellation
After a consumer places an order to purchase goods A, if the order is cancelled for some reason, and goods A has not been shipped from the warehouse at this time, the locked goods need to be unlocked and the inventory quantity needs to be readjusted.
4 Deducting inventory when shipping out
If the consumer does not cancel the order, the warehouse system needs to ship out the goods and notify the inventory system to adjust the number of goods available for sale.
5 Transfer between warehouses
If a merchant has multiple warehouses located across the country, then when a consumer places an order, the merchant will try to ship from the warehouse closest to the consumer to shorten transportation time and reduce costs. However, in actual operations, there may be unreasonable distribution of commodity inventory quantities. For example, commodity A in the southern warehouse has been sold out, but there is still a large backlog of commodity A in the northern warehouse. In order to sell commodity A as soon as possible, it needs to be transferred from the northern warehouse to the southern warehouse. Transfer between warehouses involves initiating transfer applications, transfer out of warehouses, and transfer in of warehouses.