1. Business Use Case Examples

After purchasing Products from a brand manufacturer, distributors need to promptly update channel Inventory in their respective channel Warehouses. When submitting a channel Sales Order, you can configure the system to reject orders with insufficient Inventory. Upon successful order submission, the system will increase the frozen Inventory in the designated Warehouse to ensure order accuracy and validity. When creating a channel Shipping Order, you can select different Warehouses for fulfillment, which will deduct the actual Inventory from the corresponding shipping Warehouse.

Insufficient or excessive Inventory is one of the biggest challenges distributors face in operations. Proper Inventory control helps channel managers efficiently monitor Product stock levels, maintain optimal Inventory quantities, ensure smooth business operations, and avoid either the significant cost losses from overstocking or order losses due to stockouts.

2. Detailed Introduction to Channel Inventory

2.1 Channel Inventory Inbound and Outbound Operations

• Channel Inventory can only be created through Inbound Orders; you cannot directly create new channel Inventory records.
• To modify channel Inventory quantities, the system automatically creates channel Inbound Orders or Outbound Orders upon confirmation of business documents. Direct editing of channel Inventory quantities is not permitted.

2.2 Safety Stock

• You can set safety stock values for Products in the Product object.
• In order settings, you can configure how Inventory is displayed. If set to fuzzy display:
  • When safety stock is set:
    • Out of stock: Available Inventory <= 0
    • Low stock: 0 < Available Inventory < Safety stock
    • Sufficient: Available Inventory >= Safety stock
  • When safety stock is not set:
    • Out of stock: Available Inventory <= 0
    • Sufficient: Available Inventory > 0

2.3 Applicability of Channel Inventory

• Channel Inventory is exclusively for channel business use. Brand manufacturers typically use Inventory with preset Record Types, and the two cannot be mixed.
• For example:
  • When creating a channel Sales Order, you can only select channel Warehouses and validate channel Warehouse Inventory.
  • When creating a Sales Order with preset or custom Record Types, you can only select Warehouses with preset or custom Record Types and validate preset Record Type Inventory.