Configuring Pre-Orders

If you're currently managing pre-orders in your sales channel, you're already aware of how tedious and time consuming this can be. In many cases, this requires you to route your orders to a temporary location with the need to manually go through each order one by one to send them off to your 3PL. Pipe17 has made it easy to manage pre-orders. You can automate the entire process from start to finish with very little configuration work. 

 

In this article

• Use Case
• Overview
• Order Hold Functionality, Pre-Orders
• Order Routing Functionality, Pre-Orders

 

Use Case

This configuration is used for the purpose of preorders, where you are taking orders for a product not yet available to the public. For example, you're releasing a product in December but have begun taking orders in September as part of a promotion.  For backorders, where the product is temporarily out of stock, no additional steps are needed if your order routing rules are based on inventory availability. Pipe17 will hold backorders and automatically send a shipping request when your inventory is available again.

 

Options to hold Orders

1. Automations
2. Order Hold Engine

 

Order Hold using Automations, Pre-Orders

Note: On April 12, 2023, Pipe17 released a new feature called Automations. It subsumes the functionality of the Order Hold Engine. All organizations created after this date already have Automations enabled instead of the Order Hold Engine. For existing organizations, Pipe17 will slowly enable self-service migration.

 

Pipe17's Automations gives you the ability to hold orders in Pipe17 until you are ready to fulfill them.

• If your pre-orders have an associated tag (ex: pre-order), you can configure an order hold. This will tell Pipe17 to hold and mark this order as "Require Approval" before it is sent to your 3PL for fulfillment. 

1. In Pipe17, click Automations in the left navigation pane.
2. Click Add Rule
3. Give it a Name
4. Add a Description
5. Leave Order Source as default, i.e. for all order sources
6. Add your filter
7. Select Tags Equals Any Of pre-routed
8. Add Hold Order Action
9. Set Hold Minutes to 60
10. Decide if you want the hold clock to start when order was synced into Pipe17 or when customer place order in the selling channel
11. Select next status after hold as Review Required
12. Click Save

 

Order Hold Functionality, Pre-Orders

Pipe17's Order Hold Engine gives you the ability to hold orders in Pipe17 until you are ready to fulfill them.

• If your pre-orders have an associated tag (ex: pre-order), you can configure an order hold. This will tell Pipe17 to hold and mark this order as "Require Approval" before it is sent to your 3PL for fulfillment. 

1. In Pipe17, click Integrations in the left navigation pane. Next, open the Order Hold Engine.
2. Select Review Required
3. Select Add Settings
4. Open the Integrations dropdown and select the sales channel from which your pre-orders originate (ex: Shopify.)
5. In the tag field, enter the tag associated with your pre-orders (ex: pre-order)
6. Since these orders will be on hold until you're ready to fulfill, leave the Hold Minutes field blank.
7. Select the option for Review Required and click Save. 

Congrats! You've just configured any orders with the tag pre-order to be held in Pipe17 prior to being sent to your Fulfillment partner. Orders coming in meeting that criteria will show as status of Review Required:

 

 

What's Next?

When you're ready to begin fulfilling your pre-orders you can change the status of these orders in multi-select format. To narrow down all orders requiring review, you can change the filter to status Review Required (STEP 1). Next, change the status to Ready for Fulfillment (STEP2):

 

Note: If you're using order hold functionality simultaneously for other use cases, we recommend to filter these orders by tag instead of status. To do this, click the Advance tag and configure your filter as the following: 

 

 

That's all! Your pre-orders will now be sent to fulfillment. You will start seeing shipping requests within 5-20 minutes. 

 

Order Routing Functionality, Pre-Orders

Alternatively, you can configure Pipe17 to apply order routing rules to orders that meet your pre-order criteria. This method works if you have a temporary pre-order location configured in your sales channel. Order Routing can be found in Integrations > Order Routing. 

To configure order routing for pre-orders, you can apply a rule for a specific SKU or an order tag. For specific rule configuration, feel free to reach out to our support team for the best recommendation. 

In this example, we're adding an order routing rule to route all orders containing the SKU preordersku1 to the location titled Pre Orders:

 

Step 1

1. On the Order Routing page, add a new order routing rule by clicking the "Add Order Routing" button on the bottom right. Next, give your rule a name such as "Pre Orders".
2. Next, leave the Destination blank if you don't need to filter certain customer regions. If you do, then select the region (ex: US East, US West, United States, Canada)
3. Select your Pre-Orders location from the Fulfillment Location dropdown. 

 

Step 2

1. Click the Add Filter button
2. Give your filter a name such as "Pre Orders"
3. If you only have one pre-order SKU, you can Search for Line Item SKU in the dropdown titled field. If your pre orders encompass multiple SKUs, the best approach is to utilize a tag. If this is the case, search for Tags instead. 
4. Operator should be Equals
5. The Value field should include either your SKU or the tag applied to your pre-orders.
6. Click Save & Apply

 

What's Next?

When you're ready to begin fulfilling your pre-orders, simply visit your Orders tab and follow the instructions below: 

 

1. Click the Advanced filters button on the right
2. Change the field to "Line Item SKU" or "Tags" depending on how your rule was initially set up 
3. Click Apply

 

This will generate a list of orders with your pre-order criteria. Next, you will want to multi-select the orders and change the status to Ready for fulfillment as noted in earlier steps in this guide. 

 

That's all! With your pre-orders configured in Pipe17, you can stop worrying about the complicated processes in your sales channel and have more control over how and when these orders are sent to fulfillment.