Release on January 17th, 2023

Summary

We are currently working on some exciting improvements that we look forward to sharing with you as we kick off the new year! The first set of improvements that were recently released are tied to Inventory and a new pricing strategy that will help you create more targeted pricing rules for parts.

Product Enhancements

Updates to Inventory Management

We are working on a few enhancements to inventory management, including new supported fields for inventory uploads and a new location for maintaining inventory.

New Location for Inventory in the RP Platform

The Inventory section of our platform has moved! You’ll now find the uploads and configuration pages under a new Inventory section in Account settings. Additionally, the ‘Warehouses’ page has moved to this new Inventory section in the platform.

We’ve expanded our support for inventory processing to now include the following fields:

• Bin (BIN)
• Source (SOURCE)
• Last Sale Date (LAST_SALE_TIME)
• Last Received Date (LAST_RECEIVED_TIME)

Our system will process the data and store it in our database, although future improvements will be needed to make use of this information. Click here for more information on current functionality. We will keep you updated on future enhancements for these fields.

New Global Product Attributes

You will find new global product attributes on the Product page in the RP Platform. A lot of these fields were already in place and in use through the master catalog, however, we’ve now surfaced these for you to apply your own overrides if needed. Click here for more information.

The attributes that are now visible to you, include:

• Fast Mover: This field can be used as a filter for Google Shopping Feeds to generate a new feed specifically for fast moving parts.
• Labor Time (Hours): This field can be used to promote the labor time in hours for installing the part. The information will be visible under the Details section on web stores.
• Sold in Quantity: This field will allow you to share the quantity for each product, however, there is no current logic in place to control how this is added to the cart.
• Tags: This field allows you to maintain common tags on your products, which can then be tied to pricing rules for your selling channels. The list of tags can be managed using a pipe delimited list (Example: Vintage|Clearance). More information on pricing is available in another section.
• Required MPNs: This field can be used to identify other parts that are required when purchasing a part. There is no current logic in place to control how this is added to the cart, so it’s strictly informational and will be visible in the Details section on web stores.
• Part Type: This field is used to apply ACES part types to products, which helps improve estimated weights and dimensions, along with suggested search terms on web stores. You can download a list of accepted values and add the part type IDs using a pipe delimited list (Example: 14998|14999).

All of the new fields are also available when you bulk export Product data. You can also update these fields via a Products bulk import. Click here to learn more about managing bulk updates for your products.

New Pricing Strategy for Product Tags

The new Tags attribute that has been added to Products can be used to add new pricing rules for parts that meet the proper conditions. This is a great way for you to offload Obsolete parts, maintain Clearance pricing, and any other strategies that would benefit from targeted pricing. Click here for more information on creating price rules by tags.

Steps to implement a tag-based pricing strategy:

1. Add a tag, such as Obsolete, to the appropriate products in your catalog. This can be done on individual parts under the Products section of the RP Platform, or you can apply the tags using a Products bulk import.
1. Note: If you need to add more than one tag, use a | character separate tags both in the RP Platform and in the Products bulk import.
2. Go to the Pricing section on one of your selling channels, then select ‘Add New Rule’.
3. In the first step for a Pricing Rule, select ‘Tags’ as the strategy for applying this rule to your products.
4. Enter one or more tags that this new Pricing Rule will be tied to.
1. Note: If you need to add more than one tag, use a | character separate tags.
5. Select the appropriate condition if there are multiple tags:
1. Apply the Pricing Rule to products that have ANY of the listed tags. This means that as long as the product has at least one of these tags, then the new Pricing Rule will be applied to it.
2. Apply the Pricing Rule to products that have ALL of the listed tags. This means that the product has to contain ALL of the listed tags for the new Pricing Rule to be applied to it.
6. Add the ‘Type’ and ‘Percent’ to your Price Rule.
7. Optional: Add a date range if this price rule should only be in effect for a limited amount of time. This could be helpful if you’re offering Clearance pricing.