Part 1: Data Import & Sync
DESCRIPTION
To get your Turbo Inventory account activated you’ll need data within the system. The easiest way is to connect your Shopify or WooCommerce Store which will bring over products and new customers/sales. You can also pull all your sales and customer history. But it will not bring over vendors, employees, warehouses or bin locations.
DELIVERY
Please send any files you would like to import in a CSV format to info@turboinventory.com
FILES TO SEND
Vendors: you can incorporate the vendor name, vendor ID or internal number, email, phone, account rep name, street address, city, state, zip, separate billing address, and any notes on the vendor
Customers: customer information can contain customer name, email, phone, notes, location N [name, email, phone, street address, city, state, zip, notes]
Employees: name, email
Warehouses: These should be entered directly within Turbo Inventory
Inventory: inventory should be counted and added to the system, this can be imported by sending us sku, quantity on hand
Part 2: Channel Connection
DESCRIPTION
As a secondary step to the data collection & import, and one that can be done right off, you should get your account connected with the channels you plan to fulfill orders through with Turbo Inventory. Channels, such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and others enable you to pull your orders, customers, and inventory into the Turbo Inventory so it can be leveraged to fulfill orders across channels.
DELIVERY
You can reach out to our team to have the channel connected, or simply go within Settings & Tools > Business Details and follow the directions to connect that channel.
CHANNEL CONNECTIONS SYNC:
Not all channel connections will bring over inventory information
Products & Variants: The reason you should connect your Channel early on in the process is that Turbo Inventory will pull in all your product information for you. Product name, image, SKU, barcode, weight, categories, digital/physical status, and inventory will all be brought in automatically
Locations: each of your locations will be brought into Turbo Inventory and added as a warehouse within. Orders are routed to the closest location with inventory available by default
Orders: Orders come into Turbo Inventory in near real-time and include the order ID, location to fulfill from, shipping method, order tags, customer, shipping address, and item IDs contained within the order as well as the quantity that should be shipped with the order
Customers: As an order comes in Turbo Inventory will also bring in a record of the custom associated with the order, as well as the customer shipping address
Part 3: Employee Accounts
DESCRIPTION
One of the first things you can do to make life easier is to add your employees and assign their roles and responsibilities within Turbo Inventory. Anyone who might be involved with Turbo Inventory should be added (employee accounts are free). Limiting an employee’s roles will also limit what they will see in the platform, so make sure to determine which roles each employee should have and check off only those capabilities they need to have so as not to provide private information to an employee who should not have this information.
DELIVERY
Begin adding employees within the Settings & tools > Staff Users section of Turbo Inventory. You can assign permissions to the employee.
Follow this Guide to All Things Employees
CHANGE EMPLOYEE ACCOUNT STATUS
Manage Employees within Turbo Inventory
Activate and Deactivate Employees: Simple click into an employee record to activate/deactivate and change the account roles
Part 4: Product Detail & Barcodes
DESCRIPTION
If you’ve already connected your eCommerce channels, the product and variants should have already been brought into your account. If you need to bring a large number of products into Turbo Inventory without a channel connection, contact us and we will help you import these.
Products need to have a few items to be used within Turbo Inventory, of course the more information you add, the better your success will be. For instance, dimensional information, when applied to the product variant will determine the box size suggestion during fulfillment.
DELIVERY
Ensure each of your products has a barcode associated with it. If you do not have barcodes, Turbo Inventory can generate barcodes for your items, you can print out and apply to a box containing multiple quantities or you can print a label for each individual product. We recommend using QR codes as they are the easiest to recognize.
PRODUCT DATA THAT SHOULD BE WITHIN Turbo Inventory
Basics: Product name, categories, image
Variants: SKU, price, L*W*H dimensions (you can utilize different weights, barcode(s), attributes, variant options (UOM, size, color etc.)
Backordered item: Items that are back-ordered will not be added to a fulfillment batch, instead Turbo Inventory will attempt to fulfill the items within that order which are in stock. Once that item is restocked or it is manually marked as not back-ordered Turbo Inventory will add the item under that order and you can fulfill the rest of that order
Part 5: Vendors & Purchases
DESCRIPTION
This area of Turbo Inventory is not required to be able to maintain inventory and fulfill orders so long as you have inventory. It is however necessary so that you can place purchase orders, or have your purchase orders generated for you. It is also necessary to track costs and provide an overall COGS-style report. By tracking purchases within Turbo Inventory you will have a better handle on when to purchase, how much to purchase, and when new inventory will arrive as well as to have better metrics all around on the complete cycle of inventory within the warehouse, so there are certainly advantages though it is not necessary.
DELIVERY
Initially, you may opt to import vendors and the associated products and costs. If you only have a few vendors and smaller catalog you might opt to input them manually and associate the products and costs through Turbo Inventory. To get this process set up you need to make sure each of the vendor within Turbo Inventory holds the products and the cost levels. On the purchase side, Turbo Inventory allows you to enter a lead time on the product, which is factored into the platform when your purchase orders are generated. Over time, Turbo Inventory will look at your order history, current demand, and lead time to generate purchase orders so you can send them off to your vendors and receive inventory.
REQUIREMENTS FOR PURCHASE ORDER CREATION
Vendor & product association
Creating purchases: products do not need to have a vendor association before they can be used to create a PO. Each PO can be created for only one warehouse at a time, and can be seen within Purchase Orders -> Purchases
Automated purchases: Turbo Inventory will help you generate POs by using the following factors to determine when a purchase should be made:
Min/max desired product range the purchase will bring your inventory up to the max product level set on the product
Lead time: the time from when a product is ordered from a vendor to when it is received is your lead time. You can set a default value for this lead time
Sales history: Turbo Inventory will look through as many past orders as you have for a specific product to determine if there is seasonal or other variability and try to match this
Product demand: here the system is looking at how many units are being ordered and whether this is generally increasing or decreasing
Part 6: Carriers & Packaging
DESCRIPTION
Connection to your carrier accounts enable you to purchase labels and generate a shipping label for each order. You can connect multiple carriers at once which will provide various shipping options available for the box size used to pack the order with. Package sizes are stored here and then added to a warehouse. So, you can have different box types at one warehouse than another. Box quantities are also tracked within Turbo Inventory to help you know when you need to purchase supplies for packaging.
Guide: connect your carriersGuide: add packaging
DELIVERY
There are only two primary steps here. The first is to add your carrier accounts within the Turbo Inventory admin area and the second is to add the package sizes you offer to your admin area, then make them available under the inventory -> packaging within a specific warehouse.
NOTE: you must add packaging on the inventory > warehouse level before it will be available to package orders up on the fulfillment workflow
THINGS TO CONSIDER
Current list of carriers available: we are using ShipEngine on the back-end of Turbo Inventory to connect carrier accounts - here are the available carriers
Address validation: each address coming in with an order is automatically verified and if it is not valid, will not be pulled into the batching of orders and you will need to revisit the order on your channel
Rate shopping: by default Turbo Inventory will select the most appropriate shipping service based on time, distance, and cost of the carrier service, you can make a selection during fulfillment
Packaging availability: you must add package sizes and quantity to a warehouse before they can be used as a valid option during fulfillment
Part 7: Printers & Devices
DESCRIPTION
Turbo Inventory will work with nearly any printer from a laptop, or any AirPrint compatible printer on an iPad or other Apple device. The same goes for Android, any printer compatible with Android devices will print. The ideal setup is listed below, but we encourage you to use what you have and add printers as needed. If you will be using iPads then it will need to be an AirPrint compatible printer.
Part 8: Fulfillment & Shipping
DESCRIPTION
If you’ve made it through this onboarding process you’ll now be ready to start batching up orders, picking them, packing the order, and getting a shipping label. In order for this process to work it’s very important you’ve set up the warehouse and added inventory, as well as handled the carrier connection, channel connection, and have added packaging material to the warehouse. The first step here is to batch up the open orders. Creating a batch of orders places similar orders together so when you are picking you will visit less bin locations to handle more orders, as in you’ll be picking for many orders at one time, then go through a fulfillment process that uses all the items in the batch to complete each order separately.
DELIVERY
The picking process should be fairly straightforward once you have batched up a group of orders. This should be done as few times per day as possible as the batches become more efficient the more orders are contained within the batch. Once a batch of orders is picked you will go step by step through a fulfillment process with each order presenting the relevant items and a box size suggestion for the order. Once items are packaged, Turbo Inventory will automatically present the shipping labels available for that order where you can purchase and print the label.
THINGS TO CONSIDER
Batches will be assembled with a limitation on the number of items you want to have in a specific batch. Putting a number of 1 on the batch size will create individual order batches so you can fulfill one order at a time.
Single Item Batch: If you’ve created a batch, you can go into the open order and find a button to fulfill that specific order which will take you into the specific order fulfillment within the batch containing the order