Inventory

In Print Trail, 'inventory' is physical stock (unlike print-on-demand which involves holding no stock).

What is an ‘Inventory location’?

Inventory locations are physical warehouses where you can store your stock with Print Trail
An inventory location is a warehouse used to store your products and ship fulfilments (part or all of an order) direct to your customers.
Print Trail can store your products in one or more inventory locations, in the US and UK.

👉 Print Trail gives you a great deal of control over how your orders will be shipped, including mixing print-on-demand with inventory per-product, and allowing you to choose which production method and/or inventory location should be used for each shipping country or zone.

Add an inventory location to a product

Inventory locations are enabled and configured per-product:

Go to a product’s ‘Inventory’ tab
Click the ‘Add Inventory Location’ button
Choose which inventory location you wish to stock your product
Choose which shipping zones (e.g. countries) you wish this inventory location to ship this product to
Optionally, set a ‘Low stock alert’ level for this product. Learn more about Low stock alerts

Note: You will now need to send stock to the inventory location, unless we are handling this for you.

Edit a product’s existing inventory location

Go to a product’s ‘Inventory’ tab
Choose an inventory location you wish to edit
In the ‘Actions’ column, Click the pencil (edit) icon
Choose which shipping zones (e.g. countries) you wish this inventory location to ship this product to
Optionally, set a ‘Low stock alert’ level for this product. Learn more about Low stock alerts

Delete a product’s inventory location

Go to a product’s ‘Inventory’ tab
Choose an inventory location you wish to delete
In the ‘Actions’ column, click the trash (delete) icon

Note: you can only delete a product’s inventory locations when the stock quantity is zero

Configure shipping zones

For each product’s inventory location, you can set which shipping zones that location should ship to.

This is per-product, per inventory location, giving you a great deal of flexibility in how your orders should be fulfilled.

😮 Important: You can set each product to be available via one or both of print-on-demand and warehoused inventory. Did we mention that this was per-product? Ok, we did. But it’s worth repeating!

‘Low stock alert level’

For each product at an inventory location, you can optionally set a ‘Low stock alert level’.

Your team members will receive an email notification when this product’s stock level at this inventory location drops below the amount you choose.

Stock levels

Each inventory location for a product will display its stock level for the current product, and the most recent time the stock level was synced (fetched from the inventory location).

Backorders

Backorders enable you to accept orders and fulfilments for products which are out of stock.

For example, consider a scenario where you have zero stock for Product X at any inventory locations but you know you have stock on the way, and you do not want to reject orders for this product.

Each product at an inventory location has an ‘Allow backorders’ setting. By default, backorders are not enabled. You need to actively enable backorders where you require it for a product at a specific inventory location.

👉 Backorder settings are only used when the product is not available to be fulfilled by any other means. For example, if a product is in stock at another inventory location or is available via print-on-demand, orders for that product will be fulfilled via one of those locations.

Sending stock to Print Trail

Sending new stock to, or replenishing stock at, a Print Trail inventory location is straightforward. We just need to know the shipment details including:

You must notify us in advance if you are sending new stock to a warehouse location. Please email us at support@printtrail.com with details including:

Product SKU(s)
Quantity of each SKU
Is the delivery palletised or in cartons/boxes?
Expected delivery date
Inventory location you are sending stock to

Once your stock is dispatched, please send us any tracking links.

How Print Trail chooses inventory versus print-on-demand, for each order

What happens when an order is placed for a product that has both inventory and print-on-demand enabled?

The answer is that Print Trail usually assumes that inventory stock should be used as the first choice method to fulfil an order. The reason for this is that you have invested in this inventory stock, so it makes sense to realise that investment by selling the stock. Also, this reduces your storage costs.

However, this only succeeds when both of these conditions are met:

The order’s shipping address in located in a shipping zone assigned to one of the product’s inventory locations; AND
There is sufficient stock at the inventory location to fulfil the entire order line

If both the above rules do not match the product at any of its inventory locations, then Print Trail will next check to see if the order line can be fulfilled via print-on-demand.

If print-on-demand is not an option, the final check is whether the product has backorders enabled at any of its inventory locations.

If none of the above results in a positive match, the order line cannot be fulfilled by Print Trail.