Stock your own warehouses and 3PLs by transfer
The Send Planner can keep one of your own warehouses or 3PLs stocked the same way it stocks a fulfillment network. A regional 3PL that serves the West Coast is a typical example. Its own sales set how much it needs, it shares short stock with the networks by priority, and its sends become draft warehouse transfers from your other warehouses.
Before you begin
- You need the Send Planner → Edit permission to turn a warehouse on. Without it, the switches are greyed out with "You need the Send Planner edit permission".
- To create the transfer drafts later, you need Send Planner → Draft and Warehouse Transfers → Create. Transfer drafts don't need the integrations permission that marketplace drafts need.
- Check whether Demand Planning already plans transfers to the warehouse along a distribution-network route. Plan each warehouse in one place only; see Avoid stocking a warehouse twice.
Turn a warehouse on
- Go to Inventory → Send Planner and open the Network rules tab.
- Scroll to Stock your own warehouses. It lists your own active warehouses and 3PLs, with their Type (Your warehouse or 3PL) and how each is used In the plan as: Ship-from source, Destination, or Excluded from planning.
- Switch on Stock by transfer for the warehouse you want the planner to keep stocked.
The change saves straight away, without touching any other unsaved edits on the tab. The planner says "Warehouses stocked by transfer saved. They are planned from the next calculation." The card's title shows how many are on, for example 1 stocked by transfer, and the warehouse's In the plan as changes from Ship-from source to Destination.
To stop, switch Stock by transfer off again. The warehouse goes back to being a ship-from source from the next calculation.
What changes when a warehouse is a destination
- It stops being a source. A warehouse stocked by transfer doesn't send to the networks any more, and it leaves Ship-from lanes and sources as a row. It appears there as a column instead, so you can choose which warehouses may ship to it.
- It gets its own network card. A card with the warehouse's name and the network chip Warehouse transfer appears among the network cards, with the summary "Draft warehouse transfer from your own stock". Set its target cover, floor, priority and the other rules there, like any network. Its defaults are a 30-day target, a 7-day floor and a priority of 0.7. See Set network rules.
- It gets a column in the plan. The plan shows a column for it next to the fulfillment networks.
How the planner sizes its sends
| How it's worked out | |
|---|---|
| Demand | The orders fulfilled from that warehouse. |
| Stock it has | Available units at the warehouse, plus transfers shipped to it and not received yet, plus purchase and production orders due to land there. |
| Open drafts | Transfers to it that haven't shipped yet count as sends already on the way, so the planner doesn't plan them twice. |
| Days to check in | The typical transit time of your past transfers to that warehouse. With no history, 5 days. |
| Freshness | Never out of date. Its stock is SKU.io's own record, so it never stops a plan with an out-of-date stock error. |
Keep at least one source
The plan needs somewhere to send from, so at least one warehouse has to stay a ship-from source. Warehouses excluded from planning don't count as sources. When turning on one more warehouse would leave no real source, its switch is greyed out with "Keep at least one warehouse as a ship-from source". If the list changed while you had the tab open, saving fails with "Keep at least one warehouse as a ship-from source: a warehouse stocked by transfer is not a source."
Only your own active warehouses and 3PLs can be turned on ("Only your own active warehouses and 3PLs can be stocked by transfer."). Marketplace warehouses and archived warehouses aren't listed.
A warehouse with Exclude from Purchasing / Demand Planning switched on in its settings is neither a source nor a destination. It's listed as Excluded from planning, and its switch is greyed out with a tooltip that says why. To stock it by transfer, switch that setting off first. See Leave a warehouse out of the plan.
If you have no warehouses or 3PLs of your own yet, the card says "You have no warehouses or 3PLs of your own yet." Click Add one to create one. See Create & edit a warehouse.
Avoid stocking a warehouse twice
The distribution network in Demand Planning can also plan transfers to your own warehouses, along the routes you set there. If both plan the same warehouse, it can be stocked twice. The planner doesn't block it, but it warns you:
- In the In the plan as column, a warehouse that Demand Planning also feeds says "Demand Planning also transfers here from" followed by the source warehouses. Once you turn the warehouse on, the note adds ": it can be stocked twice".
- When you switch it on, and at the top of the card while it stays on, a warning names the warehouse and the sources the distribution network already transfers to it from, and ends "With both on, the warehouse can be stocked twice: turn it off here, or remove its distribution-network route." Click Open the distribution network to go to the routes.
Choose one planner per warehouse:
- Use the Send Planner when the warehouse should compete for the same stock as your fulfillment networks, with its own target cover and priority. Then remove its route from the distribution network.
- Use Demand Planning when the warehouse is part of your make, buy and move plan and should be replenished along with purchasing and production. Then switch Stock by transfer off here.
See Plan replenishment across warehouses and Plan what to make and buy.
What happens to the sends
When you create shipment drafts from the plan, each send to a warehouse stocked by transfer becomes a draft warehouse transfer from the source warehouse, with an expected arrival from the typical transit time of your past transfers to that warehouse, or 5 days with no history. Nothing ships until someone opens the transfer. Stock you allocated for the send stays allocated on the transfer's lines, and it's released when the transfer is opened (the transfer then sets its own stock aside) or when a line is deleted.
You ship and receive these transfers like any other. See How transfers work, Ship a transfer and Receive a transfer. For creating the drafts, see Create shipment drafts.
Next steps
- Choose where sends ship from: pick which warehouses may ship to the new destination.
- Set network rules: give it its own target cover and priority.
- How sends reach each network