Print on demand (PoD)

Print on demand (PoD)

What is Print-on-demand (or POD)?

Print-on-demand (or POD) is an order fulfillment method where items are printed as soon as an order is made. With POD, you can create customized designs for a variety of products and sell them under your brand. For example, custom-made printed t-shirts.

How to set up the PoD method in EasyEcom?

First, you need to create the design and base SKUs/variant SKUs in the product master (if not already done).

Base Products can be created from the product master-



You can create a simple or variant product for your base SKUs. If you create a variant product, it will be easier to map the base SKUs while creating PoD SKU. 

Enter the cost and all the necessary details in the product master. Once you have created the SKUs, you need to do GRN and import inventory for those SKUs. 




Creating Design SKUs



1. Click on Create design button on the product master page.
2. Download sample CSV template
3. Fill out the design SKU and descriptions in the CSV and upload .
4. Upon successful job completion, the designs will be created and available for further process of POD creation.

Depricated : For design SKUs, you need to ensure that there is always enough inventory available in the system. You can put any random number (say 20,000) for design SKUs because, in reality, there is no inventory for designs. 
New : The user doesn't need to keep design inventory for the POD SKUs. 

After this, follow the below process-

Step 1: Go to Masters > Combo master > Create combo > PoD



Step 2: Click on PoD > save template



An Excel file will be downloaded.

Step 3: Add details to the Excel sheet

When using parent SKU for mapping, max parent SKUs allowed in sheet is 2,000
When using Variant SKU for mapping, max variant SKUs allowed in sheet is 10,000




In this case, the Design SKU is the one which will be printed on the base SKU. The base SKU is the t-shirt.

Example:
You have created the following variant product for a t-shirt-


The parent SKU is the "T-shirtt_variant". The child SKUs are "T-shirtt_variant_white_M, T-shirtt_variant_white_L, "T-shirtt_variant_blue_M, shirtt_variant_blue_XXL", 

In the excel file, if you put "T-shirtt_variant" as the Base SKU, 4 PoDs will be created for 4 child products.

OR else, you can put individual SKUs as well in the excel file if you want to map only specific SKUs.

You can add different bases and designs at your convenience. For example, print 1 can be clubbed with a black or blue t-shirt OR a white t-shirt may be clubbed with different prints.

If a parent SKU with variant SKUs are created and this parent SKU is mapped to a design sku to create a pod sku, then if later a new variant is added to this parent sku then the system will automatically create a pod sku for this new variant along with the design, the parent sku was mapped to.


Step 4: Upload the excel sheet 



The PoD will be created.


The created POD inherits the dimentions of the Base SKU

POD MRP = Base MRP + Design MRP. This can be updated by the user from Product Master page.

Mapping the marketplace SKUs with PoD in Easyecom

You need to map your marketplace SKUs with the PoDs which you just created.

Go to the bulk map listing page and map the SKUs in Easyecom.

Where to check the created PoD and what is the logic behind inventory?

Go to Inventory > Manage inventory > Search for the design SKUs



Explanation:





Point 1: These are the PoD SKUs that are created. All of the PoDs will have "PoD" yellow tag attached to them. Below the PoD tag, base, and design SKUs are mentioned.

PoD SKU is the combination of design and base SKUs. For example, if design SKU is hulk and the Base SKU is White Medium, then the Pod created will be "Hulk_White_Medium"

Point 2: This is the physical inventory. 
Suppose an order is shipped with design PoDs and the customer has returned that order. In this case, the physical inventory of the design PoD will increase because the t-shirt is already printed. So the returned inventory (physical inventory) will go to the PoD.

For example, a customer orders 5 spider print blue t-shirts. But the customer has returned it. Now, in the marketplace, it will show the physical and virtual inventory of PoD i.e. 5 + virtual inventory.

Point 3 : The virtual inventory of the design SKU (number 3) and the physical inventory of the base SKU will remain the same. If any order comes in, the inventory will be reduced from both base and design SKUs. 

Point 4 :  Total inventory (no. 4 in image above)  = Physical inventory (no. 2 in image above)  + Virtual inventory (no. 3 in image above) 

Processing of PoD orders:

If the physical inventory of the Pod order is available, the inventory will be automatically assigned to the order and the order will come in the new orders page.

In case only the partial inventory is available, the partial inventory will be assigned and reserved for the order. But still the order will go to the failed orders page.

If the order is in the failed order tab, follow the below process-

Step 1: Download the CSV file from the failed orders page
(In the new update, Production orders will be created automatically)


The Excel file will contain a column "POD applicable" by which you can know if the order is a PoD order or not.



Step 2: Go to inventory > production orders > create Kit/Pod order 
(In the new update, Production orders will be created automatically)






Enter the SKU - This is the SKU that you want to produce for PoD order. Refer to the CSV file you just downloaded to know which SKU you need to produce. Search that SKU in the search bar.

Enter the quantity - The system will suggest the quantity to produce based on the PoD orders which are on the failed orders page. You can either enter the system's suggestion or you can enter the quantity which you want to produce based on your preference.

Enter the due date.

Step 3: Click on create order



Step 4: Complete production of the production order which you created.



Step 5: Once you complete the production, you need to do putaway for those PoD SKUs in order for them to reflect in the system.

If the POD putaway settings is on in your account then you need to do manual putaway using the below process.
If the settings is off then the putaway will automatically happen in a virtual Bin (Virtual Bin not visible in Bin master) and thus you can directly process the orders without manual putaway.

UPDATE
 The system now automatically generates a consolidated Production Order for all Print on Demand orders at the frequency which it was set at. Meaning, instead of creating single production order for single POD SKU, now the system will create single production order for multiple POD SKUs.
Production order screen & detail view of production order screen as shown as below.








Go to putaway > Kit/PoD tab



Once you do the putaway, the inventory will be automatically assigned to the PoD order and the order will move from failed orders to the new orders page.

After that, you can process the order normally.


UPDATE
Now you may create bulk production orders for POD manually.
​

Exceptions:

1. PoD will work for serialized accounts.
2. PoD module does not support the production and processing of the PoD orders that are done outside the target warehouse.
3. A backend setting is required in case the user wants to keep custom name of the SKU for the POD SKU(Currently the system creates the POD SKU automatically). If this setting is active then the user, during the base SKU and design SKU mapping will be required to put in the varient SKU(if any) instead of the parent SKU. eg. Tshirt SKU is parent SKU which has 2 variant SKUs Tshirt_red_XL and Tshirt_Blue_XL where Tshirt is the parent SKU and Tshirt_red_XL & Tshirt_Blue_XL are the variant SKUs.

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