Available to promise (ATP) inventory allocation

WebSphere Commerce supports two inventory systems: Available to promise (ATP) and non-ATP. The interface to inventory is encapsulated by a single inventory task command, which in turn invokes either ATP or non-ATP task commands. ATP inventory consists of on-hand inventory minus reserved inventory and inventory allocated for backorders. ATP inventory is the inventory that is available to fulfill orders.

The ATP support enables you to allocate stock from existing inventory or backorder from expected inventory. You can also obtain an estimated availability time for each order item once it has been added into the shopping cart. The ATP also supports allocating stocks for future order processing.

The WebSphere Commerce system uses a configuration flag to determine which set of interfaces to use. The ALLOCATIONGOODFOR column in the STORE database, which was previously used to distinguish ATP from non-ATP inventory and to define the expiration time of the inventory allocation, has now only the latter use. The INVENTORYSYSTEM column in the STORE database has values -1, -2 or -3 depending on whether the store is using ATP, non-ATP or no-inventory respectively.

The following commands are ATP task commands for WebSphere Commerce:

• AllocateInventory

• GetEligibleFulfillmentCenters

• CheckInventoryAvailability

• AllocateExistingInventory

• DeallocateExistingInventory

• AllocateExpectedInventory

• DeallocateExpectedInventory

• ReserveInventory

• AdjustInventoryReservation

• ManageInventoryCmd

• DoInventoryActionCmd

ManageInventoryCmd and DoInventoryActionCmd are quite different from other commands in that they act as a facade to others. Customers can select these two commands as their own inventory integration points.

The WebSphere Commerce order management subsystem is compatible with earlier versions, and one can continue to use the GetEligibleFulfillmentCentersCmd and AllocateInventoryCmd task commands used in the previous product releases to interface with your own inventory system.

Related concepts

Inventory
Order Management subsystem

Related tasks

Enabling a store to use available-to-promise (ATP) inventory
Create an order for a registered customer
Create an order for a business user
Change orders

Related reference

Order Management subsystem URLs