Prepare for ecommerce and marketplace sales

Prepare for ecommerce and marketplace sales

Overview

Preparing your ecommerce and marketplace integrations for sales and periods of high demand will reduce your risk of overselling goods and protect your reputation.

To prepare for sales, we suggest reducing your batch size, setting up a stock buffer, and allowing your integration to manage its own inventory during the sale.

Follow this guide to find out how to prepare for ecommerce and marketplace sales.

One week before

One week before a sale, check your products are correctly priced in Cin7 Omni and your ecommerce integration. You may need to plan to update your products' prices the day of your sale.

Also, if you're hosting a sale on Shopify or Amazon, submit a ticket with Cin7 Support.

This ticket will tell Support to reduce your integration’s batch size, which temporarily improves its performance. This is only available for Shopify and Amazon integrations, so if you’re having your sale on another platform, skip this step.

Use this template for your ticket:

  • Area: Connections and Integrations

  • About: Ecommerce and Marketplaces > [name of ecommerce or marketplace integration]

  • Subject: Reduce batch size for sale

  • Description:

    Hi,

    We’re having a sale on our [name of ecommerce or marketplace integration] starting at [start date-time] and ending at [end date-time].

    Please, for the duration of this sale, reduce the size of this integration’s batches.

    Thank you,

    [your name]

One day before

One day before the sale, test that Cin7 Omni is properly connected to your ecommerce platform:

  1. Log in to Cin7 Omni.

  2. From the Integrations menu in the navigation, open your integration.

  3. Click Test Connection.

If your integration is properly connected, you will see a green banner. If you see a red banner, you must open Settings and reconnect your integration on the Connect tab.

Once your integration is properly connect, set up a stock buffer (and, if necessary, exempt products from the buffer) and upload your stock levels from Omni:

  1. From the Integrations menu in the navigation, open your integration.

  2. Open Settings.

  3. Open the Settings tab.

  4. Ensure Stock is turned on.

  5. Set Stock > Buffer Stock.

  6. Click Save Settings.

Now you’ve set your stock buffer, upload your stock levels from Omni (if necessary, first exempt products from buffer):

  1. Click Back to Dashboard.

  2. Click Update All Stock.

One hour before

One hour before the sale, disable stock sync so your integration manages its own stock levels:

  1. Log in to Cin7 Omni.

  2. From the Integrations menu in the navigation, open your integration.

  3. Open Settings.

  4. Open the Settings tab.

  5. Turn off Stock.

  6. Click Save Settings.

For the duration of the sale, your integration will manage its own stock levels.

After the sale

As soon as your sale ends, enable stock sync and (optionally) remove your stock buffer:

  1. Log in to Cin7 Omni.

  2. From the Integrations menu in the navigation, open your integration.

  3. Open Settings.

  4. Open the Settings tab.

  5. Turn on Stock.

  6. Reset Stock > Buffer Stock (optional).

  7. Click Save Settings.

Now stock sync is enabled, sync your stock levels from Omni:

  1. Click Back to Dashboard.

  2. Select Update All Stock.

FAQs

What are batches?

Omni downloads sales orders from your ecommerce and marketplace integrations in “batches.”

Batches are small, manageable groups of transactions. To improve the performance of Shopify and Amazon integrations during sales, Cin7 Support can temporarily reduce the size of batches. They cannot permanently reduce the size of batches.

What is the stock buffer?

The stock buffer subtracts a fixed quantity from your products’ stock levels in your integration. This makes them conservative. We recommend an effective stock buffer of 20%, but you may need to exempt some products.

How do I exempt products from the stock buffer?

To exempt products from the stock buffer:

  1. On the Stock Activity tile on your integration’s dashboard, click Exempt Products From Buffer.

  2. Click Exempt beside each product to exempt from the stock buffer.

The stock buffer won’t be subtracted from these products’ stock levels in your integration. Ensure you exempt products before uploading stock levels from Omni.

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