In e-commerce, waiting for an inventory delivery to be unloaded before starting sales can result in missed opportunities. Sell Ahead is a feature within ShipHero that allows you to make products available for sale in your store before they physically arrive at your warehouse.
Why Sell Ahead Matters
Sell Ahead serves as the bridge between "In Transit" and "In Customer Hands." Use this feature to:
- Launch Pre-orders: Generate revenue as soon as a vendor confirms a shipment.
- Minimize Out-of-Stocks: Bridge the gap between selling out of current stock and receiving the next shipment.
- Optimize Cash Flow: Start selling items while they are still in transit.
Things to Consider
- The Sell Ahead value cannot exceed the total quantity of the line item on your Purchase Order.
- Note for 3PLs: Sell Ahead is only available at the child account level not the 3PL level. It is recommended to partner closely with your child accounts that are utilizing this featuure to ensure they fully understand the implications of using this feature.
Table of Contents
- How Sell Ahead Impacts Inventory
- Managing Partial Deliveries
- How to Implement Sell Ahead
- Sell Ahead Reporting
How Sell Ahead Impacts Inventory
ShipHero calculates Available inventory—the quantity pushed to sales channels—using a specific formula that includes Sell Ahead:
Available Units = On Hand - Allocated - Backorder + Sell Ahead
Sell Ahead acts as a virtual stock addition. If you have 0 items on hand but set a Sell Ahead of 50, your store will show 50 units available for purchase.
System Rules for Sell Ahead
- Active Statuses: Sell Ahead is only active when your PO is in Pending, Receiving, or Arrived status. Once a PO is Closed, the Sell Ahead quantity is removed from available stock.
- Custom Statuses: ShipHero allows you to create Custom Purchase Order Statuses and whether or not you want to push the Sell Ahead quantity to your store platform. For example, if you have a stage like "On the Water," you can create a status with the Include in Sell Ahead enabled to trigger Sell Ahead automatically.
- Automatic Decrementing: As items are physically received at the warehouse, ShipHero reduces the Sell Ahead value. For example, if you have a Sell Ahead of 20 and receive 5 units, the system adjusts the Sell Ahead to 15 to prevent double-counting.
Managing Partial Deliveries
If a vendor sends fewer items than ordered and you do not expect the remaining balance to arrive, you must manually adjust the Sell Ahead to 0 on that PO.
| Scenario | System Action | Required User Action |
| Full Receipt | Sell Ahead drops to 0 as items are scanned. | None. |
| Partial Receipt (Remaining balance expected) | Sell Ahead remains for the remaining balance. | None. |
| Partial Receipt (Balance cancelled) | System continues to Sell Ahead the missing units. | Manually update Sell Ahead to 0 to stop selling unreceived stock. |
Partial Receiving Scenario
Below is a scenario explaining how to handle a partial delivery while using Sell Ahead.
You create a PO for SKU PictureFrame1 with quantity of 100 and Sell Ahead of 50:
- ShipHero pushes an available quantity of 50 to your store (e.g., Shopify).
- Customer orders 50 units, store shows 0 available.
- Vendor says they can only ship 50 units (partial fulfillment).
- You receive the 50 units.
What happens next:
ShipHero will continue to push 50 units to your store because it expects you to receive the remaining 50 later
The system calculates: Sell Ahead of 50 - Received 50 = 0, but there are still 50 units unreceived with Sell Ahead set.
To stop selling unreceived inventory:
You must manually adjust the Sell Ahead to 0 on the PO when receiving the partial shipment. If you don't adjust it, the system will keep showing the Sell Ahead quantity as available.
How to Implement Sell Ahead
There are three ways to add Sell Ahead quantities to your workflow:
- Shipping Plans (Purchase Orders): Enable Sell Ahead within your shipping plan settings. This is the standard method for pre-orders.
- CSV Imports: When uploading shipping plans (a.k.a. purchase orders), include a Sell Ahead column in your CSV file and enter the quantity accordingly.
- ShipHero API: Developers can set Sell_Ahead values when creating or editing a purchase order directly via the GraphQL API.
Sell Ahead Reporting
Being able to identify which items have an active Sell Ahead quantity is important when managing your products. Find which products have a purchase order with a Sell Ahead using the Sell Ahead column on the Inventory > Products page.
If you need to find the specific Purchase Order the Sell Ahead is enabled on, open the product details page and scroll to the Purchase Order section. There you will see the list of purchase orders which you can navigate to by clicking the link on the PO number or ID.