How to set which site will be used for which customers or handle "consignment"/"sale or return" stock

Firstly, let's clarify the meaning of the terms Sites and Locations.

You can choose if a site can be used to fulfill orders. By default, all sites can be used for order fulfillment, but you can choose to prevent this by editing the site and unticking the "Can be used to fulfill orders" box. There must always be at least one site that can fulfill any order to any customer.

It's possible to link a customer to a specific site (or sites). To do this go to the customer's main page in Breww. You can also choose at this point if you'd like this customer to only get stock from their linked site(s), or if this is just a preference and stock can be used from other sites if required.

Consignment stock is a supply chain model in which a product is sold by a retailer, but ownership is retained by the supplier until the product has been sold. Because the retailer does not actually buy the inventory until it has been sold, unsold products can be returned.

Breww can handle this for you. We suggest setting up a new site specifically for this customer, then linking the customer to the site and restricting the customer to only receive stock from their linked site. You should also go into the site's settings and tick the "Only fulfill orders for linked customers" box as this will ensure that other customers never use the stock from this site.

When you move stock to this customer on a "consignment" basis, you can simply move the stock's location in Breww to this customer's site. Don't raise an order/invoice/delivery at this stage. For information on how to move stock, see How do I move/transfer product stock and stock items to a different site/location? If the stock's original location is bonded and the customer's site is not bonded, this will trigger the duty at this point.

Later, when some of this stock has been sold by your customer, and you are ready to invoice them for it, you can raise the order and complete the delivery/invoice. This will only use stock from their linked location and, of course, result in the invoice being generated to account for the sale.

If you have chosen a "Default fulfillment site" in Settings -> Order/invoice settings, and the customer in question isn't explicitly linked to any sites, Breww will use the default site that you have chosen.

If the customer is linked to specific fulfillment sites, or you haven't set a default site, Breww will follow the process outlined below to determine the site to use:

Firstly, Breww will determine the customer's "priority sites" and "non-priority sites".

This will result in some customers having both priority sites and non-priority sites, and some customers only having sites in one of those two groups. Having determined the sites for each group, Breww will order these by the distance (line of sight) to the customer. If a site doesn't have an address set, then Breww will assume the site is at your main address (as entered when your account was created). We would recommend making sure all your sites have an address set.

Next, Breww will go through all the customer's priority sites (if they have any) in order of closest-first and look for a site that has the required stock available to fulfill this order. As soon as it finds a site that has enough stock, it will use this site to fulfill the order.

If there isn't a priority site that has the required stock available (or there are no priority sites at all), Breww will repeat the same process for the customer's non-priority sites.

If this still results in no site matching (i.e. you don't have the required stock available from any site), then Breww will go through the sites again and determine a simple percentage of stock required that is available for each one. For example, if an order has four items on it and a site has enough stock of three of these items, this would be a 75% match. Breww will pick the highest matching site (from either priority sites or non-priority sites). If multiple sites have the same percentage of stock available, Breww will look for the closest site to the customer and also choose a priority site over a non-priority site if there is one.

Please note that you can mark sites as not able to fulfill orders, in which case they will be completed ignored in the above process and will never be used to fulfill any orders at all.

When you're viewing an order, in the top-right section where the delivery information is shown, Breww will show you the site that will be used to fulfill the order. You can manually adjust this here to any of your sites that are enabled for order. There is also an option to force the order to be locked to this site, which will prevent Breww from ever getting involved in the automatic site selection for this order again.