Order Management subsystem

The Order Management subsystem is a component of the Transaction Server that provides shopping carts, order capture, order fulfillment, inventory, and payment function support.

Order management is broadly divided into:

Order capture

Order capture provides functionality such as sales quotes and shopping carts and order submission. There are a number of ways to create shopcarts and submit orders, as described in the order mechanisms section.

Order processing

Order processing is responsible for the overall coordination of inventory allocation, payment processing, releasing the order to fulfillment and tracking order status.

Inventory processing

WebSphere Commerce supports four inventory systems: Available to promise (ATP), and non-ATP, No inventory, and external inventory. The interface to inventory is encapsulated by a single inventory task command, which in turn invokes either ATP or non-ATP task commands.

Payment processing

WebSphere Commerce Payments supports the use of payment plug-ins for offline or online payment processing.

In addition, the subsystem deals with order management capabilities such as:

• quick order or buy

• scheduled orders

• multiple pending orders

• reorders

• order splits or backorders

• future orders

• Orders
  A typical order includes one or more products, billing and shipping addresses, payment details, and the total cost including shipping charges and taxes. Comments and price adjustments can also be included in an order.

• Performance improvements for large shopping cart
  The following shopping cart commands have been optimized for performance: OrderItemAdd, OrderItemUpdate, OrderItemDisplay. These changes optimize the commands so that performance gains can be achieved, especially in cases where shopping carts typically contain hundreds of order items.

• Inventory allocation
  WebSphere Commerce supports five inventory systems: Available to promise (ATP), non-ATP, no inventory, external inventory, and DOM inventory. The interface to inventory is encapsulated by a single inventory task command, which in turn invokes the appropriate task commands.

• Calculation codes for orders
  Calculation codes represent ways of determining monetary amounts associated with OrderItems. The CalculationCode object and its associated CalculationMethod objects define how to calculate amounts such as price adjustments (coupons and discounts), shipping charges, and taxes.

• Discount codes
  A discount is a price incentive offered to customers to promote a purchase. A discount code is a calculation code whose calculation usage is "discount." It is used to calculate order item adjustments. Each row in the CALCODE table represents a CalculationCode. CalculationCodes represent ways of determining monetary amounts associated with OrderItems. They are used to calculate discounts, shipping charges, sales tax, and shipping tax. A CalculationCode attachment can be limited to specific TradingAgreements.

• Fulfillment centers
  Stores use fulfillment centers as both inventory warehouses and shipping and receiving centers. One store can have one or many fulfillment centers.

• Fulfillment centers and shipping arrangements
  A fulfillment center represents a place from which products are shipped to customers. Inventory counts are maintained separately for each fulfillment center. The OrderItemAdd and OrderItemUpdate commands assign a fulfillment center to each item in an order by calling the task command DoInventoryActionCmd for both ATP and non-ATP stores. By default, the ResolveFulfillmentCenterCmd task command for non-ATP stores, and the AllocateInventoryCmd task command for ATP stores, assign fulfillment centers based on inventory availability, shipping address, and the precedence attributes of the applicable shipping arrangements.

• Pricing and offers
  Offers present different prices for the same product or SKU to different customers. In WebSphere Commerce, an offer is also known as a trading position. An offer represents the price of a catalog entry and criteria that the customer must satisfy in order to pay that price.

• Orders and order items
  From a customer perspective, an order is a list of selected products. For example, an order might contain two books and a CD. Each product on that list is an order item. From a store perspective, an order is a list of order items. It is part of the store's data.

• Order capture mechanisms
  WebSphere Commerce supports several mechanisms for submitting orders. A customer or Customer Service Representative can submit an order using any of the following methods:

• Order method URLs
  WebSphere Commerce supports several methods of order submission.

• Extended order and order item attributes
  We can use the order command or the REST interface to add, update, or get extended attributes.

• Quantity units
  Products can be sold, and inventory tracked, in a variety of quantity units, such as kilograms, inches, liters, and so on. Of these units, products can be ordered in minimum quantities, and by multiples of specific quantities.

• Shipping codes
  Shipping information can be defined at the store level. Attributes such as shipping mode, shipping code and ship jurisdiction can be defined at the store relationship level also. In most cases, products are shipped from a fulfillment center, a separate agency that is responsible for warehousing the store's goods.

• Store groups
  The store group is used by all stores to share assets without having to create an asset store to hold them. For example, all TaxCategories, SupportedLanguages, SupportedCurrencies, CalculationCodes, and ShippingJurisdictions that are defined in the store group are automatically available for use by all stores.

• Tax codes
  A tax calculation code indicates the tax calculation for order items. A store typically collects two type of taxes: sales or use tax, and shipping tax. The tax codes are unique within each tax type for a store. Only one tax calculation code of each tax type is applied to a particular order item.

Related concepts
Currency
Available to promise (ATP) inventory allocation
Calculation codes for orders
Discount codes
Fulfillment centers
Fulfillment centers and shipping arrangements
Pricing and offers
Orders
Orders and order items
Order capture mechanisms
Requisition lists
Quantity units
Shipping codes
Tax codes
Return items
Kits and kit components for returns
Order items and catalog entries for returns
Suggested refund amount
Automatic approval for returns

Related tasks
Enable euro currency support

Related reference
Dual display guidelines
Euro currency guidelines
SetCurrencyPreference URL
Order Management subsystem URLs
Error codes for error views
Order method URLs
ScheduledOrderCancel URL
ReturnCancel URL
ReturnCreate URL
ReturnCreditAndCloseScan command
ReturnDisplay URL
ReturnItemAdd URL
ReturnItemDelete URL
ReturnItemUpdate URL
ReturnListDisplay URL
ReturnPrepare URL
ReturnProcess URL