Warehouse Wednesday: Life Cycle of an Order

Life Cycle of an order

Today I thought it would be fun to take you through the steps we use each day in processing your orders.

First, we have to buy all the cool products and stock our shelves. Often, this involves traveling to CHA, or meeting with sales reps who show us all their wonders. Sometimes, we take our cues from you, our customers, as to what you wish we would carry.

We place our orders with the suppliers, trying as best we can to judge how much product we will need. That's a very tricky part…. order too much and you're stuck with inventory you can't sell… not enough and you risk a long wait to be restocked, thereby losing orders. It's always such a fine balance, but we do our best.

Then, when the product arrives, we need to check it in to make sure no mistakes were made by the vendors. Blaine is our man when it comes to this step. I load the items on the website and Charlene and Kathy update our inventory system to reflect the incoming inventory. We then catalog items and sort them on our shelves to they can easily be found when we pull an order.

Now we can start taking orders!! YAY!!!

Ashley and I take your phone calls, faxes and emails and give them to the warehouse. Sherie (our warehouse manager) pulls your order and places it in a "bin" along with your paperwork.



Your bin is then weighed and taken over to the "orders ready to ship" shelf, where it is taken by Ashley or me to invoice. At this point, we either contact you with a total for payment, or process the payment method you have provided. Your bin now heads off to our shipping area.

In shipping, Charlene, Kathy, or Ashley (sometimes Sherie or even myself) will package your product with care, add some little freebies if we have space and affix a label to the package.



Every afternoon, at 4 PM, one of us takes the van with all your packages to the post office where we entrust them to the US Postal Service for delivery.

Hugs,
-Fran
www.franticstamper.com
541-826-2500

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