If you are an arbitrage seller (i.e. you sell items purchased from a retail store or site), the way you use RestockPro will be a little different. Here's some advice for best results.
1. Set up the stores or sites that you purchase from as suppliers.
Then, associate them with the products you are purchasing from those stores. See How do I set up suppliers? and How do I set up products? for full instructions.
Not all supplier and product information may be applicable, but using the supplier and product structure in RestockPro will enable you to use the other features such as margin and profit data, competitor information, and restock suggestions.
Make sure to set up details such as supplier cost (what you pay for the product), prep and shipping fees, etc. so that you can get accurate margin and profit data for your store and make informed decisions about what items to continue sourcing and selling.
Tip: If you buy the same SKU from a different retailer than usual, you can update the supplier for that item. Go to Products, click on the product, and change the Supplier Alias drop-down. You can easily go back to the first supplier if you purchase from that retailer again.
2. Manage out-of-stock periods effectively for better results.
If you are temporarily unable to restock an item due to supply constraints, you may go out of stock at Amazon. RestockPro helps you see what items are out of stock and estimate what sales you missed as a result so that you can try to restock more of that item in the future to avoid further out-of-stock periods.
- Make sure you set "Adjust Velocity for Out of Stock" to YES on the Restock Rules page. This adjusts your sales velocity upward by up to 15% in the restock calculations for items that went out of stock so that your suggested reorder and ship quantities are higher for next time.
- Check the Restock Needed column on the Restock Suggestions page for red out-of-stock flags. These flags appear when the item has experienced significant out-of-stock days. If you see this, you may need to consider adding even more units to your suggested reorder/ship numbers.
- In addition to the flags, check the SKU Monthly Sales Analysis report to see how much time the item spent out of stock.
- If an item has stayed out of stock for a long period of time (beyond the time period you have chosen for the sales velocity rule), you may need to manually choose the number of units you want to replenish. RestockPro will update your suggested reorder and ship quantities once there is enough sales data.
3. Use tags and product status to manage/filter products you can no longer purchase.
Retail stores and sites may discontinue products you are purchasing to sell. Use product tags to mark them as "discontinued" and/or make them inactive so that you will no longer see Restock Suggestions for these items.
Track shipments created outside of RestockPro.
If you use another tool to list and ship arbitrage items, RestockPro will help you track those shipments too. See Why should I track shipments created outside of RestockPro?