Make "Before the buy" Inventory Checks to fulfil more orders in full
Authors:
Michael Wholohan, Holger Lierse
Changed on:
17 Nov 2025
Problem
Customers expect to know at checkout whether their entire order can be fulfilled in one go, avoiding the frustration of delayed deliveries, split shipments, backorders, or partial cancellations. However, without real-time visibility into inventory across all fulfilment locations and the logic to assess whether an order can be fulfilled in full "before the buy" button, retailers are unable to reliably make fulfilment promises, forcing them to process the order first and deal with exceptions later.
This inability to perform pre-fulfilment checks results in poor customer experiences from unexpected split shipments, increased shipping costs from multiple deliveries, higher customer service volumes handling partial order inquiries, and potential order cancellations when customers discover items cannot be fulfilled as expected.
Example
A national home furnishings retailer selling coordinated furniture collections had a checkout system that accepted orders without validating whether all items could be fulfilled from the same location or timeframe.
Orders for complete room sets frequently resulted in split shipments because their system couldn't verify upfront that all items were available together. By the time warehouse teams began processing orders, inventory conflicts had already occurred, forcing items to ship from multiple locations over extended timeframes.
This created compounding costs through multiplied logistics expenses, additional carrier bookings, and increased warehouse labor. Their customer service team was overwhelmed managing delivery coordination and issuing retention discounts. Most critically, their brand positioning around "complete room solutions" was undermined when customers received furniture in pieces over weeks rather than coordinated deliveries.
Without order-level fulfilment validation at checkout, they couldn't optimise their fulfilment strategies, protect margins from unnecessary shipping costs, or deliver on their core value proposition.
Solution Overview
Fluent Order Management provides the necessary intelligence to validate fulfilment options before the customer completes the purchase, ensuring the order can be processed optimally and in full. Fluent achieves this through a Pre-Fulfilment Inventory Check, instantly simulating fulfilment options using its real-time Global Available-to-Promise (ATP) data and intelligent sourcing logic based on the cart contents. This guarantees that the customer only sees options and delivery promises that can be reliably fulfilled.
Crucially, the routing engine can be configured with strict rules for Single-Shipment Validation, checking if all items in the cart can be sourced from a single location or meet specific coordination requirements.
This functionality, configured within the Order Orchestration workflows, allows the retailer to prioritise fulfillment in full over other factors, aligning fulfilment decisions with their product value proposition (e.g. "complete room solutions") while significantly reducing logistics costs from split shipments. This real-time validation is surfaced to the customer via the Checkout Experience Integration using Fluent's real-time APIs.
By implementing Fluent OMS for upfront fulfilment validation, retailers can drive significant operational benefits including;
- Protect Margins by reducing split shipments: Eliminates unnecessary, high-cost split shipments, immediately reducing logistics expenses and driving better profitability on every sale. This is often measured by Fluent Clients as improved fill rates or OTIF rates (on-time in-full)
- Seamless Customer Experience: Orders for collections are fulfilled in coordinated deliveries, reinforcing the brand promise and eliminating customer frustration and subsequent service inquiries.
- Optimised Operations: Warehouse teams receive orders that are pre-validated, minimising inventory conflicts and simplifying picking and packing processes.
Solution
Availability Interface
The Availability interface provides visibility into fulfilment options generated by the system when evaluating how an order can be completed. Availability ensures that orders are processed in line with business rules, inventory availability, and delivery or collection methods.
The interface contains one submenu: Fulfilment Options. This section provides access to all generated fulfilment options and their related fulfilment plans.
