Managing your Admin inventory

Overview

Inventory management is critical to a brand's e-commerce experience. By following inventory management best practices, you’ll run and manage an efficient and effective program. We recommend uploading inventory at a minimum once per week. Some clients send inventory data multiple times each day.  In this article, you will learn about managing your inventory directly through the ExpertVoice Admin.

Note: This article applies to brand users who have the Order Fulfillment Manager role.  Reach out to your Customer Success partner for more information.

Create or update your inventory file

Please make sure the inventory file is formatted correctly before beginning.  The inventory file must contain the following 3 required columns: 

• Fulfillment
• SKU or UPC
• Quantity

We accept UPC or SKU based on the account setup and how we’re mapping to the Store File. We recommend using SKU, since this is required on your store file and UPC is not. However, this column can be easily changed to UPC if desired.  Be sure to include the header rows in the CSV file, as seen in the example below otherwise, the upload will error out. When saving the file, ensure it is saved as .csv (Comma Separated Values) file type. 

Pro Tip: Using one of the provided templates in the Admin will ensure the file is formatted accurately.

Upload your inventory file through the Admin 

1. Log in to the Admin portal using the same credentials you use when logging into expertvoice.com
2. On the brand homepage, you will see an Inventory section towards the bottom of the page (screenshot below):

• On Hand provides a downloadable copy of your current inventory position (not accounting for anything in “processing”)
• Most Recent Inventory File provides the last inventory file that was uploaded on the specific timestamp
• Manage Inventory redirects you to the page where you can upload a new inventory file to update inventory levels

3. Click Manage Inventory and you will be redirected to the Catalog Fulfillment Outlet Inventory page

• • (Inventory) Threshold is the minimum inventory count that must be on-hand (not reserved) for SKU to be available to sell
  • Reserve Tolerance use by removing X hours worth of items ordered from the quantity available. This value should be set to the number of hours it takes for an item ordered in the system to be recognized in the brand's inbound inventory feed, (see Reserved Logic below for more details.)

• • Reserve Logic
    • From Current Time - The original way of reserving inventory, where Inventory is reserved for orders placed up to {Reserved Tolerance} hours prior to the current time
    • From Last Feed - Inventory is reserved for orders placed up to {Reserved Tolerance} hours prior to the most recent inventory feed

NOTE:  If Reserved Logic is set to From Current Time, and tolerance is 0, the reserved calculation is essentially disabled. 0 will “disable” inventory for both “From Current Time” and “From Last Feed”. Should ALWAYS be at least 1 or more for the latter to work. 

• • SKUS: total number of SKUs in your current inventory

• • Most Recent Inventory File: provides the timestamp when the last inventory file was uploaded

4. When uploading the inventory, there are two downloadable templates already created and available to use:

• Qty 100: This template creates a downloadable inventory file setting all your current SKUs in your store file to quantity 100.

• On Hand: This template creates a downloadable inventory file setting all your current SKUs in your store file with the current quantity on hand.

5. Once completed, save the file as a .csv file (the upload will not work if saved as a .xls file)

6. To upload your new inventory file, select Choose File, and then Upload

Note: An inventory file takes around 10-15 minutes to fully process and update inventory in your store on ExpertVoice.

Pro Tip:  After the processing time has passed, you can verify that the update was successful by downloading the On Hand template, which should then reflect the new SKU quantities from the file you updated.

Possible Error:  If the file is uploaded in an .xls file, the error below will appear as a reminder to upload the file in .csv format

Supporting assets:

• Admin Inventory Video Tutorial