05Monitoring
Alerts and restocking
Have the system warn you before an odd price or a stockout costs you.
Alerts are your safety net: a suspicious price change is reviewed before it applies, and stock that runs out reaches you by email before it turns into lost sales.
Price alerts
Organization → «Alerts» tab. There are eight, each with its switch: sale above the regular price, sharp sale drop, sharp price increase, sharp price decrease, price at zero, negative price, empty price and price below cost. The three gradual ones carry their threshold, in «% or more».
What alerts do
An alert stops the change before it reaches your customers. If you upload or schedule a list, do a bulk upload or edit on the product page, Koalab asks you before saving: «Before saving, check this», with each change that sets off an alert, and writes nothing until you choose «Save anyway». A source has nobody to ask: what sets off an alert stays in «Pending approval» with its reason. When writing to each channel, that channel's alerts are checked too. A price of 0 is always stopped, even with its alert off: it only goes through if you tick the box that allows it on that product. «Price below cost» comes off and only looks at products with a cost.
The low-stock threshold
It is not in the organization's «Alerts» tab: it lives in each channel's settings, «Alerts» tab, under «Stock alerts». There you switch it on, set from how many units it counts as low stock and whether the email is sent. It is measured on Koalab's stock of the products published on that channel, so a sale on any channel moves it. It belongs to each channel: it is not inherited. The Restock screen does not use it.
Mock-up: restocking, sorted by “Runs out in” The Restock screen
Restock sorts by «Runs out in»: stock divided by sales per day over the last month, with the 50 most urgent per channel. At the top, how many run out this week, in two weeks and in a month, and how many of those that sold are already at zero (an out-of-stock product with no sales in the last month does not show here: find it in Products with «Out of stock»). Columns: Product, SKU, Stock, Sales/day, Runs out in and, in the shared catalog, Status per channel. Pick the catalog with the tabs at the top, filter by ≤ 7, ≤ 14 or ≤ 30 days, search and «Export» to Excel, CSV or PDF.
The stock email
With stock alerts on for a channel, the notice reaches every member with access to that channel, with the out-of-stock and low ones, according to their «Low or out of stock» preference in Profile → Notifications: right away, or in the daily or weekly digest. If you turn off «Send the email» on the channel, it reaches nobody, but the bell lights up anyway.
Details worth knowing
- A channel follows the organization's price alerts until you change its own: Koalab asks you first, because from then on that channel stops following the organization's. Its price rules are still inherited separately. «Inherit the alerts again» brings it back. Stock alerts are not inherited: each channel has its threshold.
- Restock measures against Koalab's stock: if a channel goes apart (independent), look at it in its catalog.
- The count needs sales from the last month: without them there are no days to estimate and the list comes up empty.