📙Guide

How to create an alert on Merchbees?

Step 1 - Define the Scope

In the first step of the Alert Create screen, you need to define your items based on your needs. You can use filters if you need and check the items on the right side of the screen to ensure that everything you need is selected.

• Location: If you want to use all of your Shopify locations, leave this field as-is. You can choose single or multiple locations. If you select multiple locations, our system will sum up the inventory quantities on selected locations.

• Compare stock threshold level with: If you select variant inventory, our app will check the threshold value against the variant's inventory quantity on selected locations. If you use product inventory, the system will sum up all variants' inventory quantities, which belongs to the same product, before comparing it against the threshold value.

• Advanced Filters: If you want to use the application for all of your items, you don't need to use any of the advanced filters. Sometimes, you may want to narrow down the scope of your alert. For example, you may like to limit your alert to a vendor and send a custom email to the Vendor.

Don't select any advanced filters if you want to use the low stock alert for all of your products.

We will programmatically AND all of your selected filters. For example: Assume we have, Product A with Variant A1 and Variant A2 Product B with Variant B1 and Variant B2 If you use the Include-Product filter to add Product A and use the Include-Variant filter to B2dd Variant B1, the resulting set will be empty because the system will try to find the intersection of these sets. If you select Product B with Include-Product filter and Variant B1 with Include-Variant filter, the resulting set will Variant B1. The system won't check Product A's variants nor Variant B2. The best way to see this is to use the right side of the page, which is the List of the items based on your selections. The items on the right-hand side are dynamically generated based on your filter selections.

• Include products from following Collections only: If you select one or more collections, the system uses only the selected collections' variant/products. Please leave it empty if you want to use all collections. You don't need to select all.

• Include following Products only: If you select one or more products, the system uses only the selected products' variants. If you use product inventory, then only the selected products are used.

• Include following Variants only: If you select one or more variants, the system uses only the selected variants.

• Include following SKUs only: If you select one or more SKUs, the system uses only the variants belong to the selected SKUs.

• Include products from following Vendors only: If you choose one or more Vendors, the system uses the products that belong to the selected vendors on the Shopify system.

• Include products having following Tags only: If you choose one or more Tags, the system uses the products which have the selected tags on the Shopify system.

• Include the products that are not visible at the online store: If you uncheck this option, you don't get any notification for invisible items at the online store.

• Exclude the items which continue selling when out of stock: Sometimes, you may want to exclude the items which continue selling when out of stock. This option can be found under the Inventory settings of a product on the Shopify admin page.

Step 2 - Alert Details

In the second step, you define alert details.

• Alert name: You can name your alert on our system. It is helpful while identifying your alerts if you have multiple of them.

• Stock threshold: This is a global alert-wide threshold. The system uses this number to compare against your item's stock level. If you decide to have different threshold values for different items, the system uses this threshold for empty threshold values in your table. Assume your alert's scope is bound to 100 variants, and you put some threshold values for 15 variants. For the remaining 85 items, the system uses the global stock threshold value.

• Set different threshold values for different items: Use this option to put different threshold values for different items. You may want to put higher threshold values for fast selling products and small threshold values for slow-selling products.

Step 3 - Alert Frequency

Alert Frequency is the step where you define the frequency of your alert. You may want to get notified instantly or get daily/weekly/monthly stock reports.

• Alert sending frequency:

• Scheduled: If you want to see your low stock items as a daily/weekly/monthly report, you need to select this option. You can choose the days and hours of the day to get notified. You will get a notification, including all of the low stock items at the selected time, based on your alert's selections.

  • • Send notification only if there is at least one data in it: If there is no item suitable with your alert when your alert run, you may want to block getting an empty email by selecting this option.

  • Do not send same items in the following reports until the item's stock is higher than the threshold again: Assume you have an item that has low stock. You get the notification from our system. Then the following day, you may see the same item on your daily notification. When allowed, this option doesn't let us send the same items twice until you replenish it. We will store history on our end and wait until the item's stock level is higher than the threshold again. After that, you will get notifications as usual.

  • Instant: This option tracks inventory level changes in real-time. If there is a change that matches your alert's choice, then we notify you. Since it works in real-time, each notification will have only one item in it.

Step 4 - Notification Details

In the notification details section, you need to select how you want to be notified by Merchbees.

• Email: The system email the notification details to you.

  • Recipients: This is the TO field of the email. Please put one or more valid emails and press enter.

  • Email Subject: This is the SUBJECT field of the email.

  • Custom Email: You can customize the email provided to you. You may leverage handlebar tags here. We will provide a custom email template for you. Please consult to support for details.

  • Do you want CSV attachment as well: The system sends a CSV file attachment with the email. It is useful if you want to sort or process your data using Excel/Spreadsheet etc.

  • Send from your own email address via SMTP: Sometimes, you may want to send emails from your company email address. Assume you use Merchbees to let your supplier about stock levels, and you want to send emails from your company email instead of [e-mail]. To use this feature, you need to provide SMTP details under the settings page. Refer to the https://docs.merchbees.com/setting-up-smtp for more information.

• Slack: System will send a Slack notification, including low stock items to you. Click on Add to Slack and select a channel so that Merchbees sends notifications to that channel.

Don't forget the save your alert! There is no autosave option between wizard steps. You need to go to step-4 and submit your alert. You can edit it anytime you want.