Routing Orders to a Warehouse
If you ship from more than one warehouse, you can send each order to the warehouse that makes sense for where it is going: Florida orders from your Florida warehouse, Texas orders from Texas, everything else from your main one.
Most businesses never need this. With no rules, nothing changes, and orders follow the warehouse list you already have.
Before you start
- Choose the warehouses the channel sells from in the Warehouses card. See Choosing which warehouses a channel sells from. Routing rules can only use warehouses on that list. Until you've built a list, the Routing card asks you to do that first.
- Create the regions you want in Zones.
Where to find it
Go to Integrations, open the connection's Configure window, and scroll to the Routing card, just below Warehouses. Owners and admins can change it.
Building rules
Each rule is one zone plus the warehouses to try for it.
- Under Add a rule for zone, pick a zone and press Add rule.
- Add the warehouses for that zone and put them in order with the arrows. The first is the first choice.
- Use the arrows on each rule to put the rules in order.
- Press Save routing.
Rules are checked from the top down, and the first zone that matches the order's address wins. Put your most specific zones first.
If two zones can contain the same address, Iraca shows a notice. That's allowed. The earlier rule simply takes the address. Reorder the rules if that isn't what you want.
Everything else: the catch-all
An order that matches no rule, or has no address to match, goes to the first warehouse on the connection's list that can fill it. If none can, it goes to the fallback warehouse you chose in the Warehouses card. The Routing card shows the fallback with a link back to it.
Trying an address
Under Try an address, enter a country, state and postcode, then press Test address. Iraca shows which rule matched and which warehouse comes first. It reads your saved rules, so save first if you've just made changes.
A few things worth knowing:
- Enter the state as a name or a code. "Texas" and "TX" are the same.
- An address with no state can't match a zone that needs a state. It falls to the catch-all instead.
- The test judges the rules, not stock. It names the first choice. With Ship from another warehouse on, an order moves to the next warehouse when the first can't fill all of it; with Stay in the routed warehouse it doesn't.
When the chosen warehouse is short
Choose what happens when the routed warehouse can't fill the whole order.
| Setting | What happens |
|---|---|
| Ship from another warehouse (default) | The order goes to another warehouse on the list that can fill it, even if shipping costs more. |
| Stay in the routed warehouse | The order stays where the rule sent it, and the shortfall shows when you fulfil it. |
What the channel is told about your stock
The marketplace is told one stock number per product. You choose how it's worked out.
| Setting | The channel is told |
|---|---|
| Add up every warehouse (default) | the total across all the connection's warehouses |
| Largest single warehouse | what the biggest single warehouse holds |
| Smallest warehouse used in a rule | what the smallest warehouse named in a rule holds |
An example. A product has 10 units in the Florida warehouse and 2 in the Texas warehouse.
- Add up tells the channel 12.
- Largest tells it 10.
- Smallest used in a rule tells it 2.
Adding up is the default because it matches how stock counts worked before routing, and every unit you advertise can still be shipped from somewhere, as long as Ship from another warehouse is on. Using Add up together with Stay in the routed warehouse can oversell a region: the channel may show 12 while Texas, with only 2, is the warehouse a Texas order stays in. Iraca warns you when you pick that pair.
One warehouse per order
Iraca never splits an order across warehouses. One warehouse has to hold the whole order. A cart that mixes items kept in different warehouses can still fail to find a warehouse, whichever setting you choose.
Changing an order's warehouse yourself
If you set an order's warehouse by hand, Iraca leaves it alone. It only chooses the warehouse for orders nobody has assigned, and it stops once an order is on a pick list or has moved past Confirmed.