Fulfillment Method Types

Ship to Home Fulfillment Process

Shipments can be shipped directly from fulfillers to the customer through the following BPM steps.

• Accept Shipment: The shipment has been created and is waiting to be accepted by the fulfiller that it has been assigned to.
• Validate Items in Stock: The shipment has been accepted and is ready to be picked either individually or as part of a pick wave before fulfillment.
• Print Packing Slip: The items have been picked and the packing slip is printed.
• Prepare for Shipment: The shipment has been packed and is ready to be shipped. The shipment is considered Complete when all information has been entered and the package is passed to a carrier. The only information that needs to be provided by the user is the package dimensions; Kibo will then retrieve the shipping label from the carrier and present it in the fulfiller interface to be printed.
• Complete: The shipment has been shipped.

This diagram illustrates the basic pickup process flow, as well as showing how a split shipment occurs. There is not a true state for splitting a shipment, but it is important to understand where it occurs in the flow.

Ship to Home Consolidation

A variant of Ship to Home fulfillment is STH Consolidation. When consolidation and transfers are enabled, STH shipments can use Transfers to move all items to a centralized location to be shipped together instead of splitting the shipment. Fulfillers are able to save on shipping costs while improving the customer experience by allowing them to receive a single shipment instead of multiple.

This is an automated process performed through Order Routing based on inventory levels at the assigned parent location. However, transfers can also be generated in the Validate Stock step by the fulfiller user based on actual stock levels. If the shipment is rejected by its parent location, then the shipment will either be cancelled or placed into Customer Care depending on the Order Routing after-actions that are configured.

When consolidation is triggered, the STH flow with include one additional transfer step:

• Waiting for Transfer: The shipment will go through this state if Order Routing determined that consolidation should be used during assignment. There may be more than one transfer shipment pending - all transfers must be received before the parent can continue to Prepare for Shipment.

The diagram below illustrates the steps that the parent shipment will go through once it is assigned to the centralized location. For an example of the Waiting for Transfer step, see the Ship to Home guide. For more details about the flow that the child transfer shipments will undergo, see the Transfers section (they will follow the same steps as a transfer for a BOPIS parent shipment). 

Enabling Consolidation

At initial launch, STH Consolidation was enabled with the BOPIS Transfer site setting. Now, it has its own site settings that are separate from BOPIS.

1. Go to System > Settings > General > Site.
2. In the Transfers section, toggle on Ship to Home Consolidation.
3. You can optionally set a Default Shipping Method for STH transfers.
4. Toggle on Cancel Transfer Shipment/Item if you want to cancel transfer shipments and items when a cancellation occurs on the parent shipment. If you enable this, you can also select which fulfillment steps to restrict cancellation on.
5. Click Save.

Consolidation must then be enabled at the location level. In order for Order Routing to use consolidation, at least one other location in the group must have transfers enabled in addition to a centralized location being available.

1. Go to Main > Orders > Locations.
2. Select a location from the table.
3. In the Transfer settings section, toggle on Ship to Home Consolidation if you want that location to be able to consolidate shipments.
4. Toggle on Transfer Enabled if you want the location to be able to provide transfers for both BOPIS and STH shipments.
5. Click Save.

Buy Online Pickup In Store Fulfillment Process

Buy Online Pickup In Store, also known as BOPIS or “pickup,” involves the shipment being picked up at a store by the customer. In this case, the shipment goes through the following BPM steps.

• Accept Shipment: The order has been accepted and is ready to be sent through fulfillment. 
• Print Pick List: The pick list is generated for store associates to collect shipment items.
• Validate Items in Stock: The associate must confirm whether all items were available for picking. 
• Wait for Transfer: The shipment goes through this optional state if inventory was not available and a transfer is requested. If inventory was not available but transfers are not enabled for the location, then the user must choose whether to cancel the item or send it to the Customer Care state (or backorder, if enabled).
• Customer Pickup: The shipment is ready to be picked up by the customer. 
• Complete: The order is marked Complete once the customer collects it.

This diagram illustrates the basic pickup process flow, with options for whether a transfer is needed to supply missing inventory or not. For more details about partial pickup, see the Ship to Store Transfer guide.

However, if a BOPIS shipment includes a Preparation service item (such as Assembly, but not Delivery), then it will use an altered version of the usual BOPIS process with an Order Preparation step between Validate Stock and Customer Pickup. This step indicates that all items are at the fulfillment location and are being prepared prior to pickup.

Delivery Fulfillment Process

All items that require delivery will be grouped into a shipment of the Delivery fulfillment type. This includes delivery-only items as well as items with both assembly and delivery.

While based on the BOPIS flow, this fulfillment process includes a Delivery Preparation step (in which assembly is performed if an item on the shipment requires it) and Delivery to Customer to fulfill the shipment via the fulfiller's own trucks and store associates rather than customer pickup.

• Accept Shipment: The order has been accepted and is ready to be sent through fulfillment. 
• Print Pick Sheet: The pick sheet is generated for store associates to collect shipment items.
• Validate Items in Stock: The associate must confirm whether all items were available for picking. When the store indicates that the items have been picked then an email notification is sent to the customer informing them that the store will be calling to schedule a delivery date. 
• Wait for Transfer: The shipment goes through this optional state if inventory was not available and a transfer is requested. If inventory was not available but transfers are not enabled for the location, then the user must choose whether to cancel the item or send it to the Customer Care state (or backorder, if enabled).
• Delivery Preparation: All items are at the fulfillment location and are either being assembled or are ready for a delivery to be scheduled. The customer is charged for the order when the shipment enters this step.
• Delivery to Customer: The shipment is ready to be delivered.
• Complete: The shipment has been successfully delivered to the customer. 

This diagram illustrates the basic delivery process flow, with options for whether a transfer is needed to supply missing inventory or not.

Transfer Shipment Process

Once the transfer is shipped, it must be received and validated by the final fulfillment location before it can be marked Complete. The parent shipment only moves on to the Customer Pickup state once all associated transfers have been received (in the case where multiple transfers were required).

• Validate Items in Stock: The associate must confirm whether all items are available in inventory.
• Print Packing Slip: If items are available, the packing slip can be printed to be added to the shipment.
• Prepare for Shipment: The items and packing slip are boxed and prepared for the carrier.
• Validate Incoming Transfer: The shipment has been sent to the final fulfillment location and is pending acceptance by that location.
• Complete: The transfer has been accepted by the location that requested it. This does not necessarily mean that the parent shipment is also Complete (picked up by the customer).

This diagram illustrates the states of the transfer shipment where it fits into the parent BOPIS flow.

Curbside Delivery Fulfillment Process

When Curbside is enabled alongside UCP Order Management, the Curbside Delivery shipment process mirrors that of BOPIS as the steps to prepare a curbside delivery are the same as that of preparing a shipment for the customer to walk into the fulfillment location to collect. The difference between the two fulfillment types is that Curbside uses a series of email and SMS notifications, as well as landing pages that these notifications link to, to let the customer communicate with the fulfiller about their arrival status and vehicle information once their order is ready for pickup. See the Curbside Delivery user guide for more detail about these notifications and landing pages.

Stock validation and transfer shipments are both supported just like in BOPIS shipments. The “Customer Pickup” BOPIS step is renamed to “Provide to Customer” for Curbside, but all steps have the same function.

The Curbside Delivery business process manager steps are:

1. Accept Shipment
2. Print Pick List
3. Validate Items in Stock
4. Wait for Transfer (Optional)
5. Provide to Customer
6. Complete

When integrated with the rest of Order Management in UCP, Curbside shipments mirror the BOPIS flow. However, the “Customer Pickup” BOPIS step is renamed to “Provide to Customer” for Curbside.

Digital Product Fulfillment Process

A digital fulfillment process allows for orders to be placed with products like ebooks and digital gift cards. These products can be passed in as a digital product (with the shipment type or fulfillment method set to "Digital" in the API data), and they are placed into a digital shipment by the system. In eCommerce, these products are identified as digital based on a product attribute and usually also called out in the goodsType field of the item data, such as "DigitalGiftCard."

These shipments are automatically fulfilled by the system and do not require any fulfiller user behavior, as the digital information is immediately emailed to the customer upon order creation - this includes any gift card codes or URLs, as provided in the Create Order call. Payment on digital products is captured as soon as this fulfillment occurs, and does not wait for auto capture to kick in so that the shopper can receive their digital product email immediately. If this initial payment capture fails, then auto capture will catch it the next time it runs.

This means that these shipments follow a BPM with only one step, since there is no inventory, picking, or packing for fulfillers to perform:

• Mark As Fulfilled: Digital shipments should be automatically fulfilled upon creation. If this fails, a fulfiller can manually mark it as fulfilled to trigger the email or the shipment can be placed in Customer Care and canceled.

This diagram illustrates the digital shipment flow.

Backordered Items

When an item is backordered, it is not currently available for fulfillment but can be ordered for fulfillment at a future date. The interface will display the backordered status and available date (if known) of the item, both on the details view of an existing order and while adding an item to a new offline order.

Once inventory is available, it is allocated to the oldest order first and a new shipment is created as Ready for Fulfillment state to be routed. Once inventory is allocated, the order is moved out of backorder. 

In a Unified Commerce implementation that utilizes both the Order Management and eCommerce solutions, the shopper is alerted while submitting an order if an item went into backorder during the final inventory check. The shopper is navigated back to checkout so they can remove the item if desired or continue submitting the order with the backordered item.