The next BFCM is just around the corner, and eCommerce owners are eager to boost their sales and maximize revenue during this shopping frenzy. 💰 However, this period ends with missed opportunities and lost sales 📉 due to unexpected inventory issues such as stockouts, overstock, and order fulfillment delays.

That’s where preorders and backorders play a critical role, both helping you to more precise inventory plans, eliminate possible inventory problems, and manage out-of-stock issues much better. 💡 With this blog, we will dive into how beneficial these features can be for your eCommerce store through the BFCM.

The Role of Preorders and Backorders in Inventory Planning

Firstly, we should understand how crucial it is to manage inventory efficiently in peak times like BFCM. Imagine inventory management of your eCommerce store as a well-oiled machine—it's only truly effective when all the features are in place and working together harmoniously. ⚙️ Purchase orders, replenishment, demand planning, the strategic use of backorders and preorders, comprehensive data and analytics… All integral components of inventory planning should work quickly and efficiently throughout BFCM. 🔄

Preorders and backorders add strength and flexibility to eCommerce stores, ensuring that the inventory planning machine continues to operate without interruptions. Especially during peak seasons like BFCM, they help overcome possible inventory challenges by managing stockout and generating cash flow even when you're temporarily out of stock. 📦

Preorders help you interpret customer interest before BFCM, providing valuable market insights. By offering preorders, you can predict demand, test new products before they officially launch, understand customer preferences, and adjust your inventory plans. 🛍️ Additionally, early sales can provide you with crucial cash flow to support your business operations. 💸

Backorders allow you to continue selling and generating revenue even when stock is depleted. This feature allows you to continue selling even when you're out of stock, keeping your store profitable and ensuring that customers can keep shopping, which helps maintain their satisfaction.

📘 You can find a comprehensive guide here to better understand the use of preorders and backorders.

Are you still not sure if you need these features throughout BFCM? 🤷

Why Do You Need Preorders & Backorders During BFCM?

In high seasons like BFCM, eCommerce stores are more prone to face inventory problems as they deal with large numbers of orders. Using preorders/backorders within a functional inventory planning software would help eCommerce stores better forecast demand, minimize stockout possibility, and maintain a steady revenue stream.

If you're unsure why you need to use preorders/backorders, let's go back in time to last year's BFCM. Did you face:

• Stockouts and missed sales opportunities? ❌
• Frustrated customers due to unavailable products? 😞
• Overwhelming demand that exceeded your inventory? 📦
• Difficulty planning inventory for newly launched products? 🤔
• Cash flow issues while trying to keep selling your products? 💸

If you did, you should know you could have minimized these issues or managed them better with preorders/backorders. Well, but how?

How Can You Use Backorders and Preorders During BFCM?

To effectively use backorders and preorders during BFCM, integrating these strategies with robust inventory planning and clear communication with customers is necessary. Here's a summary of how to leverage these features effectively.

🔹 Turn Out-of-Stock Issues into Cash Flow Generator

Backorders allow you to keep selling products even when they’re temporarily out of stock. Customers can place orders and receive their items once they’re restocked. Therefore, you can turn out-of-stock issues into a cash flow generator and prevent customers from shopping from another store during BFCM.

🔹 Secure Early Cash Flow

Backorders and preorders can also provide early cash flow by securing payments before the product is shipped, which helps manage finances during high-demand periods.

• Imagine an eCommerce store selling accessories currently out of stock on its most popular item, high-end smartwatch bands. ⌚️  By accepting backorders, the store can continue selling the product and receive payments upfront. This early cash flow can be used to improve the store and gives the owner more control when creating purchase orders, allowing for better deals with suppliers.

🔹 Gain Insights into Market Demand

Accepting preorders provides valuable insights into market demand, allowing you to adjust inventory levels for the upcoming BFCM. By analyzing preorder volumes, you can better forecast the quantity needed and prevent inventory shortages during peak periods.

• For example, the same eCommerce store could start accepting preorders before BFCM starts, understand customer preferences, see which products or what colors will be more popular among customers during BFCM, and arrange its inventory accordingly. Therefore, possible inventory problems are minimized.

📌 You can read Advent Calendars with Preorder Strategy 🎁 to see how preorders can be valuable during peak seasons.

🔹 Manage Seasonality Effectively

While backorders and preorders help you understand customer preferences before peak periods and better manage unexpected stockouts, effective inventory planning during peak seasons requires considering seasonality. This means that when planning for a BFCM period, the best resource you have is the data from last year's BFCM. By using an effective inventory planning software such as Fabrikatör, you can:

• Analyze last year’s BFCM data accurately,
• Set a growth rate for the upcoming BFCM and adjust your inventory plan accordingly,
• Save time by avoiding the hurdles of manual solutions like Excel.

As we discussed before, all components of inventory planning should work together coherently for efficiency. When leveraging seasonality effectively, you should also use preorders and backorders correctly. If not used properly, they can lead to customer frustration. Especially during BFCM, it’s crucial to maintain clear communication with customers and ensure that they are informed about expected delivery times and any potential delays resulting from preorders/backorders.

Managing Backorders & Preorders Without Disappointing Customers During BFCM

Effectively managing backorders and preorders during Black Friday and Cyber Monday is crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction. To ensure a smooth process and avoid disappointment, you can follow these key practices:

👥 Communicate customers transparently

Preorders and backorders inherently involve waiting for products to be replenished, especially during BFCM. That’s why you should provide realistic delivery dates for preorders and backorders. Ensure these dates are achievable to avoid promising more than you can deliver.

In addition, informing customers about their order status from the start is crucial. You can keep them updated throughout the process with email notifications and indicate the possible arrival day on the storefront. Knowing how long they will wait and being able to track their order helps prevent uncertainty, which can otherwise lead to customer dissatisfaction.

You can leverage the Fabrikatör-Klaviyo integration to manage this process easily. You can use Fabrikatör to accept backorders and preorders, and Klaviyo can be your communication channel. In this way, you can automate the communication process and update customers with timely preorder and backorder status notifications.

📌 You can find ready-to-use Klaviyo templates for backorders & preorders here.

⛔ Eliminate the use of manual solutions

As we’ve discussed, managing preorders and backorders effectively requires seamless integration of all inventory planning elements. Using Excel for inventory tracking and managing preorders and backorders can be challenging for eCommerce stores, especially those with large numbers of inventories.

🤔 Imagine starting to accept preorders during BFCM. You must monitor the entire process closely, ensure timely purchase orders are placed, and provide real-time customer updates about their order status. Managing this efficiently with a manual tool during the busy BFCM period is difficult.

📉 With Excel, tracking these processes can be cumbersome and prone to errors. Managing and updating information in real-time is challenging, leading to delays in purchase orders and the replenishment process. This can result in unfulfilled preorders and backorders, causing issues meeting promised delivery dates.

👌 Therefore, during BFCM, you should migrate from manual tools like Excel to a more automated, quick, and reliable inventory management solution for better handling of preorders and backorders.

🚀 Use reliable inventory management software

If we sum up your eCommerce store's needs before the upcoming BFCM, the list will look like this:

• Accept backorders and preorders to make your inventory management more flexible and strong,
• Make inventory plans that take seasonality into account,
• Leverage integrations, such as Klaviyo, for effective communication,
• Fast and efficient inventory management solution with all these essential features!

📌 For a more detailed preparation list for the upcoming BFCM, use our Operational Checklist. Access it here.

Now that you know what to expect from an inventory management solution, all that’s left is to find the right software. Let us help you—it's Fabrikatör!

Fabrikatör: Easiest Way to Use Backorders & Preorders

With Fabrikatör, you can start accepting backorders and preorders immediately and take full advantage of these features before the upcoming BFCM. Fabrikatör simplifies and accelerates inventory management stages like replenishment and purchase orders, helping you manage preorders and backorders efficiently. Is that all? Of course not!

With Fabrikatör, you can manage the BFCM period with fewer inventory issues and more profit this year. 👌

• With backorders and preorders, you can enhance your eCommerce store’s profitability, resilience, and forecasting capabilities,
• You can be more proactive when planning inventory: make more realistic plans 📈 with Fabrikatör’s advanced inventory planning, avoid last-minute POs and stock issues during BFCM,
• You no longer should worry about 🔄 when to replenish stock; Fabrikatör does it automatically,
• Enrich your operations with valuable integrations such as 📧 Klaviyo, 📦 ShipHero, QuickBooks, and more to manage BFCM efficiently,
• Have better control over past data with 📊 powerful analytics to be better prepared for the upcoming peak season,
• Choose the most 💸 cost-efficient purchasing routes to decrease your costs with freight planning,

…and more!

You can experience all of Fabrikatör’s features, including the details of backorder and preorder processes, in just 30 minutes. Would you like to see how a more efficient BFCM process is possible with Fabrikatör? If yes, click here to see Fabrikatör in action.

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