E-commerce inventory management is the act of measuring the amount, location, pricing, and mix of products available from your business. As a dealer, having accurate and updated inventory is an essential concept to keep in mind when running an online store. With RevolutionParts, not only can you keep track of the inventory within your own physical warehouse, but you can broaden the number of products you can sell with the utilization of PDC (Part Distribution Centers).
Inventory Management is important for a number of reasons. First, it is just proper business etiquette. Customers want to establish trust with you by making sure a product is available and it is the correct part for what they need helps build a good business relationship. Second, if customers aren’t getting their products in the time they anticipated, or if you’re selling products at a rate you can’t fulfill, you’re damaging the relationship that you’re attempting to build with your consumers and your suppliers. Customers want to be informed of the inventory you have available and make sure it is
the correct fit for their vehicle. Later in this article, we will discuss how to show customers how much is left for a particular product.
Marketplaces (such as Amazon & eBay)
Selling through a marketplace via RevolutionParts is a great opportunity for your business to sell more products or target specific products (such as obsolete ones). Each of these selling channels' inventory can be maintained manually or automatically (keep reading to know how!).
No merchant should sell on these marketplaces if an inventory optimization strategy is in place. RevolutionParts recommends uploading inventory twice a day, once a week at the very minimum or having automation in place. Lacking an inventory strategy is risky as marketplaces enforce merchants to only sell what is in stock, which means if inventory is not updated on regular basis, you may end up with an order for an item you no longer have and have to cancel the order. For that reason, we strongly enforce dealers to have updated inventory to prevent getting suspended from these platforms.
There are two ways of doing inventory uploads Manual and Automatic:
To do a manual upload, log into the platform -> click on Products -> Inventory -> Upload ->
New upload -> select warehouse and upload the file. To configure the file, paste part number and QOH(Quantity On Hand). Always upload as a CSV when using Excel. Whenever you upload a manual file to RevolutionParts, there will be 4 fields indicating the status of the file.
Once it's done, you will see the following columns:
Processed: How many parts were uploaded.
Updated: From the processed parts, how many existing parts got an inventory update.
Warnings: From the processed, which ones did the file skip (download file for reasons)
Errors: Which parts threw an error (you can download the error file which contains the reasons the upload failed to update those specific parts).
Another way to manage your inventory is using a DMS integration. This allows you to automate any changes within your inventory, keep track of products within multiple warehouses, and save time spent on your inventory.
Note: Do you sell VW, MB, or Mopar brands? See this article for more information about inventory uploads for your store. In addition, there is another way to set up FTPS inventory via FTP, if you are interested, see this article and scroll down to the "Uploading Inventory Files via FTPS" section.
Webstore and Plugin Store (optional)
As a RevolutionParts customer, you will automatically sell the entire OEM catalog on your store. If you get an order for a part that you currently do not have in stock, you will be able to purchase it from your closest PDC. However, our platform has a feature called Inventory Management, which allows the platform to inform your customers what you do (and don't) have in stock and help in their decision-making process! (it only works on your webstore and plugin. As we mentioned above, you should only sell what is in stock on Marketplaces). You can configure the inventory messages that appear on your Web Store product pages when parts are in stock and out of stock by using this tool.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why do I have parts that I don’t have stock showing on my webstore?
We show the entire OEM parts catalog on our ParsCounter and Web Store.
2. Can I push items that I do not have in stock live on Amazon and eBay?
No, those stores will list only in stocks items due to short lead times.
3. How long does it take for my inventory to upload?
Inventory files will take time depending on the size of the file. Most will take a few minutes but large files can take up to a few hours to upload inventory.
4. What happens when I upload a new inventory file?
New inventory files will completely replace existing inventory information. If the inventory
file differs from the previous file by more or less than 30%, the customer will not be able to upload inventory.
5. How many products can I upload in my inventory file?
Inventory files are limited to a maximum of 15,000 rows.
6. Why is my manual upload failing?
If your current inventory upload is 30% of more different than your previous inventory upload, you will need to reach out to the support team. The reason we do this is to prevent the wrong files from being uploaded. Uploading the wrong file can result in you losing live listings.
7. Can I "stack" inventory files?
No, each inventory file will wipe out the previous one you uploaded.