About Inventory Catalogs

Inventory Catalog

An Inventory Catalog serves as the inventory master inside Fluent OMS and maintains current stock-on-hand (SOH) across all locations.  It receives inventory updates from one or more inventory source systems (ERP, WMS, POS, etc.) and the Order Management Workflows.  Each record represents the QUANTITY of a SKU at a LOCATION.

For example, a company may want to stock the same pair of shoes across all its locations in various quantities and want to know the exact quantities across all of its locations at any given time. All of this information can be stored within the Inventory Catalog which will then be used to determine the best location to fulfill an order from.

What is it used for in Fluent Order Management?

Each Inventory Catalog has a workflow containing all business logic related to the management of inventory stock positions. E.g., we can create and reserve inventory.  A retailer will typically have one Inventory Catalog for all of its inventory.

The Inventory Catalog Workflow is responsible for updating all inventory positions in near real-time, keeping the catalog up to date, and providing an accurate view of inventory across the entire enterprise.  

Types of data received by the Inventory Catalog include:

• Last on hand (LOH) stock positions at each location, which is imported from the retailer's inventory systems such as ERP, WMS, POS, and other third-party systems.
• Inventory updates based on order processing such as stock reservations, confirmed sales, cancellations, and returns, which are received from Fluent's order management workflows.

What are the different methods to send inventory data into Fluent?

It's possible to send Inventory data to the Inventory workflow using two methods:

Full Load Update

• Also known as an inventory snapshot. This refers to sending all inventory positions into the Inventory Catalog workflow, regardless of which inventory positions have changed.  

Inventory Position Change Update

• This sends only the inventory positions that have changed since the last update. 

Why use the Full Load updates?

Typical use cases for 'Full Load' include:

• Inventory data is being loaded for the first time into Fluent Order Management, or 
• When subsequent reconciliation processes need to occur between Fluent Order Management and the source inventory systems. This varies depending on the retailer, which could be weekly, monthly, or quarterly.

Why use Inventory Position Change updates?

Using inventory 'Inventory Position Change' updates helps maximize efficiency and alignment between source inventory systems and the Inventory Catalog by conveying only the inventory positions that have changed more frequently rather than all inventory positions on a less frequent basis.