Schedule ATP Rules

Retailers can manage the scheduling of the job responsible for ATP (Available to Promise) rules from the top of the page. By default, ATP rule jobs are scheduled to run at midnight to ensure ATP calculations occur when store traffic is minimal, making the inventory ATP ready before the start of the day.

Retailers can view the history of job runs, disable a job, or run a job once by selecting the relevant option from the job's overflow menu.

After creating a rule, it is necessary to apply it to products in HotWax so ATP can be calculated according to the rules. Applying ATP rules is a two-step process:

Step 1: Schedule Rules

First, schedule the rule categories like Threshold, Safety Stock, Store Pickup, or Shipping in the ATP App. For each category, a separate CSV file is generated containing all products matching the rules. These CSV files are then uploaded to a dedicated SFTP location.

Step 2: Schedule Import Product Facility Job

Next, schedule the “Import Product Facility” job in the Job Manager App. This step imports the CSV files into HotWax, where ATP is computed based on the applied rules.

Each rule card provides an overview of configurations and product facility selections. Retailers can click the "Edit rule" button to modify rule configurations. The rule configuration can be adjusted by toggling the store pickup and shipping options on or off, or by setting values for threshold and safety stock by clicking on the number chips.

Understanding the Cascade of Inventory Rule

Each omnichannel configuration, safety stock, threshold, BOPIS, and shipping can have multiple rules to target specific product and facility selections. Since there are multiple rules for each configuration type, products and facilities may overlap among rules. When this occurs, the last rule in the sequence of rules overrides previous rules for a unique combination of products and facilities.

Consider a retailer who wants to set different inventory thresholds for general shirts and blue shirts. The retailer sets a threshold of 5 for all shirts, allowing a minimum of 5 shirts to be available as network-level buffer stock. However, for blue shirts, the retailer wants to increase the threshold to 10 to ensure enough is available for demand.

To achieve this, the retailer would create two rules:

1. General Shirt Rule (Threshold set to 5 shirts)

   • Applies to all shirts, allowing a minimum of 5 shirts to be available as network-level buffer stock.

2. Blue Shirt Rule (Threshold set to 10 shirts)

   • Applies only to blue shirts, requiring a minimum of 10 blue shirts to be available as network-level buffer stock.

These rules should be listed in the correct sequence to ensure that the specific blue shirt rule overrides the general shirt rule for blue shirts while maintaining the broader threshold for all other shirts.

A balloon icon in the bottom right corner allows retailers to collapse or expand the inventory rules. Retailers can collapse the inventory rules to rearrange the sequencing of the inventory rules according to the cascade.

Change Rule Sequence

Base Rule

Some inventory rules only apply when a product matches a specific tag or condition. When the product no longer matches that condition, the rule stops applying.

If there’s no other rule available for that product, it gets left in the last assigned state. The last assigned state may not be what the retailer actually wants the default state to be.

Suppose a product has a pre-order tag and requires a different inventory threshold. A rule is created to set the threshold to 10 units for that product. This rule only works for products with the preorder tag.

Now, if the tag is removed from a product, the product won’t qualify for the rule anymore because it no longer has the required tag. However, the threshold of 10 that has been set won't go back to the default level just because the tag is removed.

To avoid this, a base rule can be added to set a default threshold of 5 units for all products. So even if a product loses the preorder tag, it still follows the base rule.