Inventory Export File

After processing imported inventory data and factoring in changes such as pending orders, an Export file is generated by Kibo. This file takes into account all current orders that impact inventory and informs you about the actual quantities that are available to sell. This available quantity is calculated by subtracting the pending order items and safety stock from the amount "on hand," so Inventory Export is valuable to maintain reliability in your inventory management.

Using Inventory Export

Two types of exports are available: Aggregate Exports and Location Exports.

Aggregate Exports provides total stock information for items across all fulfillment locations included in the export.
Location Exports provide item stock and location information, sorted by fulfillment location.

Note that there is no "trickle feed" in Inventory Export.

Getting Started

You must prepare either an SFTP site, S3 bucket, or GCS bucket where Kibo can drop off inventory files. Use the Export Inventory API to configure your settings for the inventory export process to these droppoints. There are three endpoints used to achieve this: a general endpoint (for any type including GCS), an S3-specific endpoint, and an FTP-specific endpoint.

The general endpoint allows you to name location groups or sites if you want the configurations to apply specifically to exports from them, which cannot be defined with the S3 and FTP endpoints. When using the general endpoint to configure exports to a GCS bucket, you must provide a gcsInformation object as shown below (these fields will be added to the API documentation soon).

{
    "exportSettings": {
        "name": "main-export-settings",
        "fileFormat": "XML",
        "exportType": "AGGREGATE",
        "gcsInformation": [
            {
                "name": "Export1",
                "gcsBucket": "inventory-export-sb/export",
                "active": true
            }
        ],
        "siteIDs": [
            "12345"
        ]
    }
}

Configuring these settings will determine how these files are delivered and received, but that will not activate any exports yet. Contact Kibo Support to enable inventory imports and exports.

SFTP Best Practices

Kibo recommends following the below guidelines to maximize SFTP performance. These suggestions apply to any file pickup and ingestion processes from a client-side or third party SFTP droppoint, as well as Kibo's own file delivery.

Ensuring access to the SFTP droppoint is the responsibility of the client or third party maintainer. Make sure that Kibo's SFTP user has read and write permissions to the directory, which is required to deliver files.
- For example, in the command line this may look like drw-rw-r-- (which means the owner has read/write, the group has read/write, others are read-only)
Ensure files do not pile up over time → utilize /archive folders and periodic cleanup of historic data. Monitor the droppoint and clean up files that are no longer needed.
- If you need to retain the files, archive them to another folder once they’ve been processed.
Ensure disk space usage is monitored and alerts the maintaining IT team in time to address low disk space situations before causing connection issues for Kibo.

Schedule Imports and Exports

Inventory imports can occur at any time, as Kibo is constantly looking for new files on the client server. Exports will occur on a regular schedule after Kibo Engineering sets up jobs to export inventory for you daily at a specific time.