Maintaining Product Inventory : Groupon Goods Marketplace

Maintaining Product Inventory

Each product in your inventory is assigned a Merchant Available QTY, a Merchant Remaining QTY (previously Groupon Available QTY), and a Sold QTY. Understanding the unique function of each of these fields will help you accurately track sales, adjust inventory and avoid oversells.

Updating Available Product Inventory

Whenever a customer purchases one of your deals on Goods Marketplace, Groupon automatically updates that product's available quantity accordingly.

However, merchants also have the ability to update any product’s available quantity manually. This function is useful when you receive a new shipment that increases the inventory you have in stock, or when transactions outside of Goods Marketplace decrease the amount of inventory you have on-hand.

To adjust your inventory for a product, search for that product on the Products page on Gateway. Once you've found the product you’d like to edit, enter your new value in the Merchant Available QTY field, or toggle up and down using the arrows, then click “Save” at the bottom of the page. Refresh your page and you should see that the Merchant Remaining QTY field has been updated.

IMPORTANT: If you update your inventory in the "Product Groups" tab Gateway will treat that as a content change to the product causing the product to be Rejected and come down from the site. Avoid this by using the "Products" page to update the inventory on your products or you can use the Bulk Price & Quantity file in the Bulk Upload section of your Gateway account. Making inventory changes via either of these ways will allow for the deal to remain live.

BEST PRACTICE: Never update your inventory's quantity until the material has arrived at your warehouse.

Merchant Available QTY

The Merchant Available QTY (MAQ) is the field used by merchants to make inventory updates. The quantity entered here should reflect the number of units you currently have available to sell at that time. Generally, merchants update this field when more inventory is in stock,

The MAQ is the only field that can be edited by the merchant. To adjust your inventory available for a product, enter your new number in this field, then click “Save” or “Update”.
After a new MAQ is applied to a product, the MRQ (see below) will then automatically update to match the new MAQ value.
Once a merchant sets a product’s MAQ in Gateway, that field will remain intact until the merchant updates this number again. It does not automatically decrease when orders are placed.

Merchant Remaining QTY

Merchant Remaining QTY, previously Groupon Available QTY, (MRQ) is the total number of units currently available for sale on the deal page. This value should never be higher than the amount of inventory you have on-hand for that product.

MRQ is automatically calculated by Groupon. MRQ re-calculates when the MAQ is updated by the merchant, when new orders are placed, or when open orders are canceled.

When new orders are placed by customers,MRQ reduces proportionately to the number of units ordered. When orders get canceled, MRQ increases based on units in the newly canceled orders.

Sold QTY

The Sold QTY (SQ) reflects the number of units of that product sold on Groupon across the entire life of the deal. This number cannot be edited and is simply visible for your record-keeping.

Troubleshooting: Can't Set MRQ to 0?

Occasionally, merchants have encountered a glitch on the Gateway platform where the Merchant Remaining Quantity remains set to “1”, even after the Merchant Available Quantity is set to “0”.

There is an easy workaround for this issue, explained in the article linked below:

"Can't Set Available Quantity to 0?"

Metric	Description	Score	Goal
Overall Performance	Overall Scorecard Health		100%
Tracking Uploaded On-Time Rate	The rate at which orders receive a tracking number upload from the merchant within 2 business days of the order being placed.		>98%
Tracking Movement On-Time Rate	The rate at which an order's tracking number shows movement on the carrier's website within 3 business days of the order being placed.		>97%
Cycle Time	Average time elapsed between the date an order is placed, and the date that order is marked delivered.	Days	<6 Days
Customer to Merchant On-Time Response Rate	The rate at which tickets and messages created by customers receive a response within 1 business day.		>95%
Cancellation Rate	The rate at which orders placed are then cancelled by the merchant prior to tracking upload.		<0.5%
Return Rate	The rate at which successfully placed orders are returned/refunded after tracking has been uploaded.		<0.5%
Customer to Groupon Contact Rate	The rate at which orders received by the merchant result in customers contacting Groupon Customer Service.		<1.4%
Customer to Merchant Contact Rate	The rate at which orders received by the merchant result in customers opening a ticket to contact the merchant directly.		<3.6%
Customer Satisfaction Score	The rate of customers indicating satisfaction with their merchant’s customer service following a ticket being marked “Solved”.		>70%

Maintaining Your Inventory

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