Ordering rules, availability and product overrides
Customer-specific rules let you apply different ordering conditions to different sets of customers on the same store: a minimum order, hidden pricing, products they can't buy, or a cap on how much of something one order may contain.
Find them under Settings & tools → Customer-specific rules.
Creating a rule
Click Add rule and give it:
- A name.
- A minimum order value, pre-tax. Leave blank for no minimum.
- A minimum order quantity in "Units". See What are "Units" for how units are configured on container types. Leave blank for no minimum.
- Hide pricing from customers. They can still order, but they can't see prices or download invoices. This suits individual pubs in a group where the group hides pricing from its sites.
Rules belong to one store, so each of your stores has its own set.
Applying a rule to customers
A rule can be attached in several places. A customer could match more than one, so Breww uses the first it finds, in this order:
- Set directly on the customer.
- Set on the customer's parent company.
- Set on the customer type.
- Set on a customer list the customer belongs to. If they're on several lists with different rules, the first rule in your ordered list wins. Drag rules to reorder them.
- The store's default rule, if you've set one under General settings.
Every level is checked against the store being browsed, so a rule belonging to one of your other stores is skipped rather than applied by mistake.
Leave the store default blank to apply no rules by default.
Per-product settings within a rule
Open a rule and you can add products to it. Each product added carries three settings, edited by clicking it:
- Not available. Customers using this rule can't view or buy the product.
- Maximum order quantity. The most a customer can order in a single order. Leave blank for no maximum. This is enforced on the add-to-basket buttons, in the basket, and again when the order is placed, so it holds whether the buyer types a quantity or clicks the stepper.
- Always in stock. Treat the product as never running out, so it can always be bought. Useful for something brewed to order, dropshipped, or with stock tracked outside Breww. Alias products share their parent's stock, so this applies to the whole family.
Note: This replaces the old excluded products list. Every product you had excluded before is still excluded, and now also carries the two new settings if you want them.
What happens to products that are out of stock
Set once for the whole store, under General settings → Out of stock products:
- Show them, and allow ordering (back orders).
- Show them, but don't allow ordering.
- Hide them entirely.
Hiding governs discovery rather than access. A hidden product is absent from lists, from search, from the categories page and from the category counts, but a direct link, a bookmark or a reorder still reaches its page, which then shows the normal out-of-stock state. That way a link in an email you sent last week doesn't stop working.
One exception is worth knowing: a drink whose every pack size is hidden can't be shown at all, so its page reports that it couldn't be found.
How much stock detail to show
General settings → Stock levels controls what a customer sees:
- Show the exact quantity available.
- Show in stock or out of stock only.
- Show exact if below 10 available, otherwise "10+ available".
- Show exact if below 20 available, otherwise "20+ available".
- Show an approximate quantity, such as "Less than 10" or "More than 100".
- Show no stock information at all.
How the available figure is calculated
How should Breww calculate your available stock level? offers two methods:
- Quantity that could be assembled from product components, minus quantity allocated to invoices. This is the "theoretical max" figure, and it's the one to pick if you aren't sure. It counts stock you could put together on demand, such as a case you would pack from loose bottles.
- Quantity in stock minus quantity allocated to invoices. This is the plain "available" figure, counting only what is already made up.
See Understanding stock levels for what each figure means elsewhere in Breww.
Which sites the stock comes from
Sites to use for determining stock levels and order fulfillment narrows your store to the sites you select. A product only counts as available if the stock is at one of them, and orders are fulfilled from one of them. Select nothing and all of your sites count.
Where you select more than one site:
- The stock figure your customers see is the total across every site you selected.
- Each order is fulfilled from whichever of those sites suits it best. Breww prefers the site nearest the delivery address that holds the whole order, and where none of them holds all of it, the site that can supply the most. This is the same working out Breww does for any other order, so your Fulfillment site resolution process setting applies here too. See How to set which site will be used for which customers.
Two things take priority over your selection:
- A customer set to be fulfilled only from their own linked sites sees stock for those sites instead. Where their linked sites and the sites you selected overlap, the overlap is used.
- A customer who chooses collection sees stock for your collection site, and their order is locked to it. That beats everything else, including a customer's own linked sites. See Delivery and collection on your trade store.
If your collection site isn't one of the sites your stock figures come from, Breww warns you when you save. That's allowed, but worth checking it's what you meant.
Counting stock that is nearly ready
Consider stock that will be available in X day's time as available now brings planned packagings due in the next few days into the available figure, so something about to be packaged shows as in stock rather than out of it. Leave it blank to show only what's genuinely available today.
The same setting exists on an individual product, and a product's own value wins over the store's.
Planned packaging release dates
Show the planned packaging release date when out of stock is on by default. Where something has run out but a packaging is planned, your customers are told when it's expected rather than simply seeing that it's unavailable.
Showing customers their next discount
Where a customer's price book gives a quantity-based discount, their basket shows how close they are to the next price band, with wording such as "add 6 more to reach the next price band".
This is worked out by the same pass that prices the order, so the bar can never promise a discount the invoice won't actually give. Nothing needs configuring: it appears whenever a banded discount applies.
Credit limits
Show a warning to customers if they're already over their credit limit, or if their basket will take them over it, is switched on by default under General settings. Nothing is shown to customers without a credit limit set up, and the warning doesn't block the order.