pixi can automatically calculate the delivery date for open customer orders, i. e. the date on which the items are delivered by the supplier and thus ready for shipment to the customer.

The delivery date is calculated for items and for customer orders with order lines in the status HAL and ANG. Orders with reservations have priority over orders without reservations. If there are several orders with or without reservation, the delivery date will be calculated according to the chosen method. The delivery date calculated in this way is used in auto-emails, displayed in pixi* Customer Service and exported to the shop.

Configuration and Calculations Methods

You can determine the method of calculating the delivery date for customer orders. The database setting Method for delivery date calculation in the pixi* Control Center > Database Settings > Customer Service serves this purpose. You can choose between the following options here:

• MAX: If this option is selected, the delivery date of the latest purchase order will be used as the delivery date for open customer order items, i. e. the latest delivery date. (Default)

• MIN: If this option is selected, the delivery date of the oldest purchase order will be used as the delivery date for open customer order items, i. e. the earliest delivery date.

• FIFO: If this option is selected, the estimated delivery date is calculated according to the FIFO principle (First In - First Out). Stock and open purchase orders are split into customer orders so that the oldest order can be fulfilled first, with reserved orders being treated as preferred.

Note: The calculation of the delivery date for new or updated purchase orders is made every day between 09:00 and 20:00 every 2 hours. At night, a complete calculation of the delivery date of all purchase orders takes place. The calculation can only be done correctly if a delivery time has been set for each supplier.

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Selection of Locations

Since often not all created locations are intended for the shipping of customer orders, you also have the possibility to exclude inventory and purchase orders of certain locations from the calculation.

For example, if you do not want the inventory in your retail outlet (Location POS) to be taken into account when determining the delivery date for customer orders from your online shop (inventory of the pick location), proceed as follows: Open the pixi* Control Center > Tables tab > table Locations. Now make sure that the checkbox of the "Estimated Delivery" column is not selected for the location POS. By default, this checkbox is selected for all locations that are not marked as special location. Please contact pixi* Support if you want to change the setting.

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Calculation and Display of Delivery Date

Requirements for Correct Calculations

To ensure that the calculation of the delivery date for all open customer orders can be made correctly, the following requirements must be met:

1. Complete the delivery time for all suppliers.

2. Make sure that customer orders from your shop can be imported into pixi*.

3. Maintain the estimated delivery date for all purchase orders in pixi* Web. A detailed explanation can be found here: Adding the expected delivery date.

4. Once you have set the status of a supplier order to Ordered (ORD), this is taken into account when calculating the expected delivery date of open customer orders.

Display in pixi* Customer Service

In pixi* Customer Service the delivery date is displayed as follows:

• current date: The current date is displayed when the ordered item is completely in stock.

• delivery date of purchase order: This is displayed if the item is only partially or not available and there is a purchase order for this item. If there is more than one purchase order for this item, the delivery date will be displayed according to the chosen calculation method.

• Delivery date remains empty: No delivery date is displayed if an item is not available (not in stock) and there is no purchase order for this item. The estimated delivery date is also not calculated if there is no available item quantity for the respective article in an existing purchase order.

The delivery date is only displayed for order lines in the status HAL and ANG.

If an item is only partially available for an order line, the maximum delivery date for that order line will always be displayed, that is

• the expected delivery date of purchase orders, if available, or

• no delivery date, if not yet ordered from the supplier.

If an order contains a bundle item, the delivery date will be set to the earliest possible date on which all components of the bundle item will be available. This is displayed:

• the maximum delivery date of an individual item of the bundle, if all individual items have a presumed delivery date assigned, or

• no delivery date, if at least one individual item of the bundle has no delivery date assigned, i. e. not in stock and no open purchase order available.

Item Delivery Date Export to Shop

When exporting items to the shop, the expected delivery date of an item is also exported according to the following rules:

• If the item is in stock and there are fewer open customer orders than inventory (that is, the available inventory is positive), then the current date is exported.

• If the available stock level is 0 or negative, but the item has already been ordered from the supplier and an estimated delivery date is set in the purchase order, the delivery date of the item will be exported to the shop according to the selected calculation method.

• if the available stock is 0 or negative and there hasn't been a purchase order placed yet, no delivery date will be exported to the shop.

• If there are open purchase orders for an item, but no delivery date is set, no delivery date will be exported to the shop.
  

Please also note the following example.

According to this logic, you can therefore indicate in the shop that an item is "available" or "immediately available" if the delivery date is the current date and / or a positive available stock. In addition, if the item is unavailable, you can display the expected subsequent delivery date of the supplier in the shop - if this is maintained in pixi. Note that pixi exports an empty delivery date if the quantity of open orders plus the existing stock is less than or equal to the quantity of open orders. Thus, no delivery date is displayed for unavailable items. However, if the quantity of open orders plus the existing stock exceeds the quantity of open orders, the delivery date from the order is exported as expected.

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Explanatory Calculation Example (FIFO)

By way of example, you will now learn how calculating the estimated delivery date works in pixi*. We consider two items A and B.

The two items have the following physical inventory in pixi*:

Table 1: Inventory

In pixi* Web there are two purchase orders with the status ORD for the following items:

Table 2: Supplier orders

There are 4 open customer orders for the sample items A and B at pixi* Customer Service. The following table shows these orders according to their priority, i. e. first reserved customer orders ordered by order date, then the customer orders without reservations.

Table 3: Customer orders

According to the priority of the customer orders and the physical stock of the two example items, only the order P003 can be sent immediately. The last column of the table displays the calculated estimated delivery date of the remaining customer orders.

Brief summary:

• Item A:

  • physical stock: 5

  • quantity ordered from supplier: 4

  • quantity ordered by customers: 8

• Item B:

  • physical stock: 2

  • quantity ordered from supplier: 5

  • quantity ordered by customers: 9

Below we explain how pixi* proceeds to calculate the delivery date.

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Calculation of Estimated Delivery Date for Example Item A

The table below shows the comparison between the stock level or the quantity ordered by the supplier and the open customer orders for item A.

pixi* now sets the estimated delivery date piece by piece for each item A:

• First of all, all items in stock are assigned to customer order P003, as this has the highest priority (see Table 3).

• This leaves 1 item A in stock, which is assigned to the next customer order P001.

• However, since P001 contains item A in quantity 3, the order can not be completely shipped.

• Therefore, the quantity ordered from the supplier will be split with the delivery date, 20.07.2018.

• The customer order P001 will be shipped at the earliest on 20.07.2018 and receives this date as the estimated delivery date.
  

This calculation logic will continue until all customer orders have a delivery date or no items from open purchase orders are available anymore.

Table 4: Calculation of Delivery Date for Item A

After all pieces of the item A, which are still in stock or have already been ordered from the supplier, have been split up to the open customer orders, a piece remains. The assigned delivery date for this item, the 20.07.2012, is now also exported as the delivery date to the shop.

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Calculation of Estimated Delivery Date for Example Item B

The following table shows the comparison between the stock level or the quantity ordered by the supplier and the open customer orders for item B. The procedure essentially corresponds to the above example for item A.

However, there is a special feature:

• The customer order P002 contains the item B as part of a bundle as well as a single item.

• The estimated delivery date is calculated individually for each order line.

• The bundle will be assigned the maximum delivery date of the individual items as an estimated delivery date, which is why the 25.07.2012 order line of Bundles C is set here.

• Compare also the overview of the customer orders (Table 3) of this example.
  
  
  Table 5: Calculation of Delivery Date for Item B

There remains the customer order P004 with a required quantity of 3 of item B. Since only one piece is available from an open purchase order, but the delivery date of the remaining two pieces is unknown, pixi* can't calculate a delivery date here. The estimated delivery date for this order line of the order P004 remains empty and no delivery date can be exported to the shop. In this example, you now would have to order 2 pieces of item B from the supplier.

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