How to set up warehouses and stock
Selling the last two units to three buyers ends in a cancelled order, a refund and negative feedback. To stop that happening, Salecare keeps product stock in warehouses and records the stock changes from sales, returns and manual adjustments in the stock movements. Once you switch reservations on, it also reserves units for orders that have not shipped yet.
You keep warehouses on every plan. The Starter plan holds one warehouse, Pro five, Business ten and Enterprise any number. Stock updates on Allegro and dispatch time from stock are separate features, available from the Pro plan.
Step 1. Open the Warehouses page
In Settings open the Warehouses page. The Settings button in the header of the Products tab leads to the same page. The path at the top of the page then leads back to Products, and on a phone the Back to … link does the same. From the start you have one warehouse named "Main warehouse", marked with the "Default" badge. The Add a warehouse button creates more. Under the title you see how many units you hold in total and how many products have stock. For every warehouse the list shows its dispatch time, the units in stock and the number of products holding stock in it, and while reservations are on also a Reserved column. On a phone these figures stand on one line under the warehouse name. On a fresh account both figures are zero. They fill in once you load your stock.
You change or delete a warehouse from the ⋯ menu in its row. The default warehouse cannot be deleted, so its menu has no Delete item. To delete the current default warehouse, first open the Edit warehouse dialog of another warehouse and switch on Set as the default warehouse there. Its stock goes with the warehouse, so on accounts that take their stock from the warehouse, the offers of its products get the new stock from the other warehouses straight away. A product that had stock only in the deleted warehouse gets 0 units and Allegro ends its live offers, so they do not sell goods you no longer have. The same goes for a bundle none of whose components has stock left in the other warehouses.
The More menu holds Send stock now and Recalculate dispatch time. Each first asks in how many offers it changes the quantity or the dispatch time. After Cancel it sends nothing. Both stay disabled while no connected Allegro account takes that value from the warehouse.
Step 2. Set the warehouse dispatch time
Each warehouse has a dispatch time, the time you need to prepare a shipment from that warehouse's stock. The Main warehouse Salecare creates at sign-up starts at "Immediate (same day)" and, after the first offer sync, takes the dispatch time most of your active offers carry (the longer one on a tie). This happens once and only while no account takes its dispatch time from the warehouse yet. A dispatch time you set yourself is never changed. Pick Change in the warehouse's ⋯ menu and match it to reality, because Salecare works out an offer's dispatch time from it. It uses the fastest warehouse where the product is available, so units reserved for orders you already took do not set the dispatch time. If goods from a given warehouse take you a day longer to pack, buyers should see that in the offer, not only in a late parcel. Salecare suggests no dispatch time for a new warehouse, so the Add a warehouse dialog saves only once you choose one. Choose the time in which you really ship from that warehouse, above all for a wholesaler.
Warehouse type, default warehouse and exclusion from Allegro
The same dialog sets the warehouse type. Choose "Own" for goods you ship yourself. Once the warehouse drives an Allegro account or reservations are on, sales reduce its stock. Choose "External (supplier)" for a supplier's stock from their file. Orders do not reduce it, only the next import changes it, but it reaches your Allegro offers just like the stock of an own warehouse. So send a wholesaler's file to a separate warehouse of the "External (supplier)" type. If it lands in an own warehouse, for example the "Main warehouse" one, the import overwrites your own stock, and sales and reservations take units off the supplier's stock.
It also holds the Exclude this warehouse from Allegro switch. Turn it on for a warehouse you do not sell from on Allegro, for example damaged returns or a reserve. Its stock is not sent to your Allegro offers, and its dispatch time does not set the dispatch time of offers. On the list such a warehouse is marked "Excluded from Allegro". Sales and reservations take units from the warehouses counted toward Allegro first, the fastest one first. Units leave an excluded warehouse only once the other warehouses run out, so the offers of the accounts that take their stock from the warehouse get the lower count.
With the Set as the default warehouse switch you pick the warehouse that receives imported stock when the file has no warehouse column. You cannot switch it off on the default warehouse itself, because an import needs somewhere to write the stock. To move the role, open another warehouse and switch it on there.
Step 3. Load your product stock
Stock reaches a warehouse in two ways. The first is an import, one-off or automatic. In its Columns step you set the Stock target warehouse, and the quantities from the file land there. The second is manual editing. On the product card, on the Details tab, in the Price and stock section, you choose the warehouse and enter the stock level. Imports work well with a wholesaler, manual editing with your own goods and corrections after a stocktake. A level changed by hand is written to the stock movements as "Manual adjustment", and the offers of the accounts the warehouse drives get the new quantity straight away, without waiting for the next sale.
Without stock reservations, sales reduce the stock from the moment the warehouse starts driving your first Allegro account, that is from switching on the stock update or the dispatch time. Orders placed earlier leave the stock as it is. Before you switch it on, enter or import the current stock, because sales from before the switch-on will not reduce it later. An offer you link to a product later works the same way. Its earlier sales leave the stock as it is, unless the offer appeared in Salecare within the last day, because then it is a new offer of a product you already hold. When you connect another Allegro account, Salecare imports its past orders, but orders placed before the account was connected leave the stock as it is, also on its offers that are new to Salecare. Only that account's sales after it was connected reduce the stock. With reservations, the stock counts from the moment you switch them on, whatever your Allegro accounts are set to. Unshipped orders from the last 14 days then get a reservation and reduce the stock when they ship, including the orders of an Allegro account you connect later and of an offer you link to a product later. Do not take those orders off the stock yourself, or their units would come off twice. Either way, sales of a product with no stock in any own warehouse, for example one your wholesaler ships, do not reduce the stock you enter later. Salecare fetches only Allegro orders, so a sale through another channel, your online shop for example, never reduces the stock. When you also sell the same goods outside Allegro, feed the warehouse stock from the system that sees those sales, an automatic import of the stock file from your shop or your integrator, for example.
Without stock reservations a sale reduces the stock as soon as Salecare fetches the order, not when it ships. So without reservations, both before you switch on the stock update or the dispatch time and when you correct the stock after a stocktake, enter the number of units on the shelf less the units of orders that have not shipped yet. Shipping them no longer reduces the stock in Salecare, so if you count them in, the stock is higher than in the warehouse, your offers show units you do not have, and the last units can sell twice. With reservations, enter the number of units on the shelf, because an order takes its units off the stock only when it ships and reserves them until then.
A bundle has no stock of its own. Its stock is counted from its components. A bundle sale reduces the stock of each component by its count in the bundle, so the single offers of those products get the new quantity. The bundle's offer on an account that takes its stock from the Salecare warehouse gets as many units as the full bundles the available components make up. A component with no stock in any warehouse, for example a card you do not count, does not limit the bundle. A component your wholesaler ships limits the number of bundles, but a bundle sale does not change its stock, because the wholesaler keeps that stock. A cancelled or returned bundle puts all its components back in stock. On the product list a bundle shows "Bundles from components" in place of the stock level, with the number of whole bundles its components make up across all warehouses. You sort and filter the list by that number just as by the stock of single products. You create a bundle with a file import, through a column assigned to the Bundle composition field. The guide "How to import products from a file and track the import history" explains it.
On the Products list, the stock of a product with a live offer whose stock you keep in a Salecare warehouse is red at 0 units and yellow at 1 to 5. The Low stock quick filter collects such products.
Step 4. Watch reservations and stock movements
Stock reservations are off by default. You switch them on from the Reserve units for unshipped orders row under the list of warehouses. Change on that row opens a panel with the switch and, while the switch is on, the Release unpaid after field (1 to 90 days, 3 by default). Save stores both, and the row then says after how many days unpaid orders release their units. Once reservations run, the units on a new order stop counting as available when Salecare fetches the order from Allegro. Salecare checks the accounts that take their stock from the warehouse every 2 minutes and fetches a new order at once, so this usually takes a few minutes. The other accounts fetch their orders every 15 minutes. Until then several buyers can buy the last unit. Once you switch reservations on, orders shipped earlier and orders older than 14 days leave the stock as it is, and unshipped orders from the last 14 days get a reservation, because their goods are still in the warehouse. Salecare releases the reservation of an unpaid order after the number of days in the Release unpaid after field and places no reservation on an unpaid order older than that. This way an abandoned order does not reserve stock for good. Allegro also cancels unpaid orders automatically. Once the buyer pays, the reservation comes back with the next order sync.
A paid order keeps its reservation until it ships or is cancelled. The reservation turns into a sale and reduces the stock when the order gets the "Sent" or "Picked up" status on Allegro. You set "Sent" on Allegro yourself, through your shipping software, or automatically when you add a tracking number, if you switch that option on in Allegro. Before you switch reservations on, make sure your shipped orders get that status on Allegro. Otherwise reservations stay on orders that left long ago and keep coming off the shelf count you enter after a stocktake. Your offers then get too few units or 0, and Allegro ends them.
While reservations are on, the list of warehouses gains a Reserved column, and the panel of the row lists the products with reserved units. The number of reserved units stands beside the product name, with In stock and Available under it. The list starts with the product holding the most reserved units, and you change the order in the sort menu beside the list heading. The panel shows at most the 20 products with the most reserved units, and when more products have a reservation, a sentence under the list says so.
Units from a cancelled order come back into stock on their own once Allegro marks the order as cancelled. Units the buyer sent back in a return come back into stock only once you click Save grade in the Condition and photos section of the return page, also on a return of the whole order. Allegro usually marks an order as returned after the refund for all its goods, often before you grade the goods or before the parcel reaches you. While a return waits for its grade, its units stay off stock. When the buyer sent back only part of an order its status does not change, and the grade decides about those units too. Only goods graded A (as new) with the "Restock" disposition come back into stock, and only once the parcel has been received, as the guide "How to handle returns in Salecare" describes. Goods with the "Relist as used" or "Dispose of" disposition stay off stock, because they are not going back on sale in this offer. When you record such a disposition after the units already came back into stock, Salecare takes them off again and records it in the movements as "Return taken off stock". That happens when you change an earlier "Restock" grade, or when Allegro marked the order as returned before the return reached Salecare.
Allegro offers from the warehouse
Dispatch time from stock and stock updates are switched on separately for each Allegro account, because one account can take its stock from the warehouse while another keeps hand-set quantities. Both options are off by default. The Allegro offers from the warehouse section under the list shows, for each account, whether it takes the quantity and the dispatch time from the warehouse. Change opens the same panel as in the Allegro account settings, and turning one on first asks how many of the account's offers change. An account that is not connected has a Reconnect button. Switch the options on once your stock is complete, because the changes reach live offers. That way offers with no stock cover stop selling before a buyer pays for goods that are not there. The separate guide "How to pause selling for offers with no stock cover" covers it.
Recent stock movements
At the foot of the page sits the folded Recent stock movements section with the number of movements. Unfold it to see up to 15 of the latest stock changes from sales, reservations, returns and manual adjustments, newest first. The When, Product, Warehouse, Reason and Change column headers change the order. On a phone the movements are rows of one card, and you pick the order in the menu above the card. Stock changes from imports do not show there. Older movements of a product are in the Change history section on the History tab of the product card.
What next
The most convenient way to load stock is an automatic import. Set its schedule following the guide "How to set up an automatic wholesaler import". And once stock is updating, close the loop and switch on stock updates on the Allegro account, described in the guide "How to pause selling for offers with no stock cover".