Backlogged Order Processing

When overselling or pre-selling products, Airhouse will keep track of the purchased quantities on orders placed to create a first in, first out (FIFO) processing queue of backlogged orders. Note that turning on the ability to oversell can affect your fulfillment time and cost. Each method has unique pros/cons outlined below.

Definitions

Out of Stock: If an order consists of an out-of-stock product, the order will not be processed or shipped since there is no inventory in the warehouse.

Backorder: A backorder is when there is not enough inventory to fulfill an order, but due to a data discrepancy, the order was sent to be processed by the warehouse. Your customers may receive notification that the order is being processed, but the order will not be fulfilled until the product is restocked.

The most common scenarios for backorders are:

When a large number of orders get sent to the warehouse all at the same time, or within seconds of one other. When this occurs there may be a delayed sync for inventory levels
When damaged units aren‘t accounted for in inventory levels
Inaccuracy of inventory levels when there is low stock

Oversold: When a product is oversold, there are more orders that product than inventory is available. With Airhouse, you can choose to oversell, or have a pre-sale for certain products.

How Airhouse Manages Oversold Orders

Pros & Cons of Overselling

Within Shopify and Squarespace settings, you are able to set up pre-sales or choose to oversell a certain product so that your customers can continue to place orders, despite not having inventory in the warehouse ready to ship. You can use this to gain insight on forecasting demand for manufacturing.

However, with overselling the order delays can affect many of your customers. Often times this can lead to increased customer service requests such as cancellations or shipping date inquiries, and it's important to note that customers who paid for expedited shipping will be kept waiting until inventory is stocked and ready to ship.

How to Manage Backorders With Your Store

If you choose to allow backorders we recommend you:

Communicate with customers early on to set expectations. Put up notices on your product's page as well as in your checkout page to ensure customers are aware that the item(s) they purchase are backordered and may take longer to ship than expected.
Forecast demand. Use backorders to your advantage to learn how much inventory to get from your manufacturer on your next order.
Restock inventory on a consistent basis. If you do not consistently restock, your customers may need to wait for their order for longer than desired.

How Airhouse can Handle Backlogs

Partial fulfillment can be turned on to handle backlogs, so that if one product in an order is out-of-stock, the rest of the products in a given order will be shipped out first. Turning on partial fulfillment can lead to multiple shipments per order, affecting your costs.

Partial fulfillment can be turned on temporarily or as a permanent control. If you would like to turn on partial fulfillment, please reach out to your Account Manager.