Does SoStocked Automatically Update 3PL Inventory?

Overview

Yes, SoStocked will automatically add and subtract inventory from your warehouse or 3PL, as long as you are correctly using our Purchase Orders, Work Orders, and Lead Times correctly. For a detailed explanation of how to manually add or remove inventory, read this article.

To create purchase orders or work orders (warehouse transfers) read this article.

Purchase Orders Going To A 3rd Party Warehouse

When you create a purchase order, the lead time that you assign to that product or that supplier determines where the inventory is going. In this example, this inventory is being produced by ABC Supplier. To see where this inventory is going, click on the lead time.

As you can see, this inventory is going to a third-party warehouse called Denver Warehouse.

As soon as you create and save this purchase order, you can see it on your Order Tracker page. As you can see, it's in production right now based on the timeline.

If you have the PO set to automatic, which is the default setting, it will automatically move from "In Production", through "Enroute", over to "3rd Party Warehouse" based on the ETA date.

As soon as that happens, go back to your Inventory page, and type in the search bar the keyword or the name of the product.

Whichever warehouse the inventory is going to--let's say it's going to Denver Warehouse--this inventory number will automatically change as long as you're correctly using SoStocked's purchase order system, so make sure you learn how to use it.

Deducting Inventory From A Warehouse

In terms of deducting inventory from a warehouse, it's very similar. When you go to your Order Tracker and if you create a work order like this one, you're actually removing inventory from a warehouse and transferring it, typically to FBA.

In this example, 100 units were transferred from Denver Warehouse direct to FBA.

When you create that work order, it will show up in the 3rd Party Warehouse, and then it goes to Enroute, and then it goes to FBA because that's how the lead time works. As soon as it leaves the warehouse, that particular warehouse inventory will deduct.

Now, go back to your Inventory page, and look for that can opener. As you can see, the work order already left the Denver Warehouse so now it's at zero inventory whereas before it had 100 units, and that 100 units will automatically be deducted.

Reconcile Shipments

Now, when you go to Amazon Seller Central and create an FBA shipment like this, SoStocked's system will find that shipment from Amazon Seller Central because we're doing an API pull every day.

When SoStocked finds that 1000 units that you've created a shipment for, it's going to tell you that you need to reconcile that shipment. You can watch the video on how to reconcile shipments here.

If you don't want to create a work order or a purchase order, or if you don't have one already created, you can just do a one-time reconcile. You can still deduct the inventory from your warehouse without creating a work order, as long as you check that little box right there. So now it will deduct these 1000 units from whatever warehouse you choose.

If you choose to reconcile without connecting this shipment to PO or a WO, SoStocked will show this shipment as enroute to FBA but it won't be connected with a work order, it will just have that FBA number. Normally, you would reconcile shipments to a work order or to a purchase order. Again, watch the deep dive on how to reconcile shipments.

So those are the ways that our system, SoStocked, will automatically add or deduct inventory from your warehouses.