9 In-Progress Sales

Sales Audit has two different methods of importing sales data - a flat file import and a REST service. If using the REST service, there is an added feature that provides visibility to the sales sent from a selling solution prior to audit for purposes of inventory availability.

Figure 9-1 Importing Sales Data Process Flow

This process works by writing sales transactions to an in-progress sales table^Foot 1  by item, location, and store day, in parallel to staging the transactions for auditing. Inventory calculations used by Merchandising then use this information to determine available inventory, allowing sales to be reflected immediately, rather than waiting for the audit process to complete. This includes calculated values used by internal Merchandising processes (e.g., replenishment), as well as in integration to external systems, such as an OMS or Oracle Retail Order Broker. Below is how this value impacts the available inventory calculation:

Available Inventory = Stock on Hand - (Transfer Reserved + Customer Reservations + Non-sellable + Return to Vendor + In Progress Sales)

For online sales that are fulfilled by a store shipping direct to the customer, the in-progress sales will be accrued against the fulfillment store. Similarly, if the sales were at a walkthrough location, the in-progress sales are accrued against the store where the sale should have occurred, not the store that sent the data.

As the auditing process confirms the sales values and sends the sales to Merchandising to process, the in-progress sales are decremented, as the actual sale will now be reflected in the stock on hand value. There is also a process that will run as the store day is closed that will clear out any remaining in-progress sales quantity that was never processed as a sale, such as if the transaction was determined to be invalid.

Returns are not included in the in-progress sales bucket. Returns are expected to be a much lower rate than sales and many times returned items are not made immediately available for sale until after some inspection of the item is made. As a result, returns will only be reflected in available inventory after they complete auditing.

Note: In-progress sales can be updated synchronously or asynchronously, based on your business needs and expected data volume. The processing type is controlled by the system option In Progress Sales Run Type.

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Footnote Legend

Footnote 1: SA_INPROGRESS_SALES