Locations in Pipe17

Locations represent places where inventory is physically stocked. In Pipe17, locations can be used to configure the following:

• Defining where Pipe17 should push inventory updates to when a fulfillment is pulled into Pipe17 
• Defining where to send pre-routed shipping requests pulled into Pipe17
• Defining where to send shipping requests created by Order Routing Engine

Location Setup Guide

1. In most cases, once an integration is connected, locations defined in the integration will be pulled into Pipe17 automatically. If not, you can also create a location in Pipe17 manually by going to the locations table page and clicking on "Create Location"
2. Configure the location address as desired. This is mainly for internal book-keeping and will not affect processes.
3. Optionally, enable "Exclude from Totals" to exclude this location when order routing engine calculates inventory availability to determine the routing destination. In addition, the inventory table page will exclude this location unless explicitly specified.
4. Optionally, set "Preserve Bundles" to true to not decompose bundle SKUs when pushing inventory updates for bundle SKUs stored in this location in Pipe17. 
5. Optionally, set "Pause Location" to true to exclude this location from order routing destinations. This can be useful when you have multiple order routing rules that reference this location.
6. If this is a fulfillment location, set the "3PL Integration" field to the fulfillment integration that will be processing fulfillments for this location. The field is required for order routing engine to consider it a viable shipping request destination. Configuration of this field will affect how inventory will be processed for the location in the following way:
   1. Integrations will push inventory updates into Pipe17 for active locations referencing this external integration where the 3PL Integration is either the same integration or empty 
   2. Integrations will pull inventory updates from Pipe17 for active locations referencing this external integration where the 3PL Integration is not the same as the integration
7. Set the location status to inactive to exclude this location from all inventory and order routing engine processes. Possible location statuses and their definitions are as below:
   
   • Active: active status means that inventory can be pulled for this location and orders can be routed to this location
   • Inactive: inactive locations will be ignored in all processes, such as handling inventory updates and being considered as an order routing destination
   • Merged: merged locations semantically mean that the reference to the location is in a different location. Typically, we merge the e-commerce location reference to the same location reference in the warehouse location. 
8. Finally, the "External Locations" section lets you configure external references to this Pipe17 location. If the location is pulled in from an integration, the external reference for itself will be set up automatically. Shipping requests to this location will be sent to the external location matching the "3PL Integration" field. Adding a reference to another Pipe17 location here will merge the two locations. Refer to the Common Location Setup Scenarios section below for common use cases. For more information, see 

Common Location Setup Scenarios

Push inventory updates from fulfillment location to e-commerce location

Let's say you have an e-commerce integration A. In A, we have locations that reference physical inventory warehouses that are used for their external system operations (e.g., triggering sales if there is excess inventory). We want our inventory records to be tracked in the fulfillment channel (integration B), so we will set up Pipe17 locations so that inventory will be pushed from B to Pipe17 to A.

1. In A, we have a location New York with ID 123. In B, we have a location NY with ID 456. Let's configure locations so that inventory records from NY will be pushed to New York.
2. Once A is configured, Pipe17 automatically pulls in New York. Upon creation, Pipe17 will associate the ID 123 to the location by adding to the external locations for New York.
3. Similarly, NY will be pulled into Pipe17 when B is configured with ID 456. We'll name it Pipe17NY for clarity.
4. Pipe17NY is a fulfillment location, so let's set the 3PL Integration field to B. This will tell Pipe17 that the location is eligible to process shipping requests. At this point, we can start fulfilling orders through Pipe17NY, and Pipe17 will update inventory records upon receiving fulfillments from NY to Pipe17NY.
5. Now, let's configure Pipe17NY to push inventory out to New York. Simply add the external reference to New York in the external locations for Pipe17NY. Now, inventory stored at Pipe17NY will flow to New York in integration A.

Flowing inventory to an ERP system

Continuing on with the above example, let's say you also have an ERP system C where you maintain a system of record for inventory. 

1. Let's say we have a location Pipe17NY configured following the steps above.
2. In C, we have a location ERP_NY with ID 789 that tracks inventory for the NY warehouse.
3. Once C is configured, Pipe17 automatically pulls in location ERP_NY with the external location configured with ID 789 upon creation.
4. Simply add the external reference to ERP_NY to Pipe17NY. Now, inventory updates to Pipe17NY will also flow to 789 in C.