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      How to Prepare Your WMS for Increased Volume During the Holidays

      Set yourself up for success ahead of the Holiday Rush with these tips for how to get your WMS prepared for the increase in volume.

      Planning for the Holiday rush means looking into all the areas of your warehouse and your WMS that might need extra support or some clean-up before the increase in volume surprises your team. 


      The goal is for Infoplus to automate as many tasks as possible without overloading the system, which can decrease speed. Our in-house Infoplus experts compiled some excellent advice for how you can prepare Infoplus to best handle the increase in volume throughout the Holiday Season.

      In addition to preparing your WMS, there are steps you can take to also prepare your warehouse and your staff for the busy season. Our warehousing experts compiled a list of 17 actions you can take to prep your operations for the increased volume.

      7 Steps to Prepare Infoplus for the Holiday Rush

      Step 1: Utilize Pre-Cartonization and Pre-Generate Labels 

      Infoplus has the ability to pre-determine which size of carton an order will need. This will save your packing team time because Infoplus will make this determination for them. To set up pre-cartonization, you will need to have all your item’s dimensions populated in Infoplus. See this article on setting up pre-cartonization for step-by-step instructions to implement this: 

      You can only pre-generate labels if pre-cartonization is already set up. Pre-generating labels reduce the time spent at the ship station, which can save you lots of time. If this is set up, the correct labels will already print (because Infoplus knows exactly what is in each box) for each order. 

      Step 2: In Infoplus, Use V2 for Processing fulfillment

      Fulfillment Process - V1 and V2

      Use this guide^^ to determine if your warehouse has any need for using V1 Processing. Most customers who are using V2 are finding faster processing times on orders and fulfillment. Supplements are the primary reason that customers are using V1. 

      Step 3: Check How Many Triggers You Have Running

      Review the triggers that you have set up in your instance of Infoplus. Triggers are sometimes used for a short period of time on specific projects, and customers often forget that they can switch outdated or unnecessary triggers to inactive, which will increase speed and lessen the data load being processed during order processing. We recommend performing a full audit of the triggers you have in place and consider reducing the number of triggers running concurrently during the holiday season. 

      Spot check your orders to see if you have triggers unnecessarily running on orders more than once per process. This can happen and significantly slow down things when hundreds or thousands of orders are all running triggers multiple times.

      NOTE: Consider doing the same audit on scripts. They can occasionally be found to run on orders unnecessarily more than once. 

      Step 4: Utilize Your Test Site 

      If you are planning to implement a new process (trigger, smart document, script, fulfillment plan, etc.) utilize your personal test environment to trial the new function before adding it to your live site. This way, if anything breaks or significantly slows down, you will only affect the test environment and not operations in your live site. This is especially true during heavy traffic times, such as Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

      Step 5: Reduce Bulk Editing/Importing Activity

      Preferably, during high volume activity, it is highly recommended that users bulk edit or import in smaller batches. Batches of 500 or fewer will not impact the processes of your WMS during urgent and high-traffic order processing (like on Black Friday or Cyber Monday). Reducing the quantity of bulk edits and imports will help users to avoid timeout issues where the bulk edit/import does not complete because of the influx of Infoplus usage. 

      Pro Tip: Batches of 500 will not impact your processes as long as it is from one user. Don’t have Use A and Use B upload batches of 500 at the same time, or you may experience slowed upload speeds. 

      Step 6: Check these tables for any errors and clean them up before the Holiday Rush begins

      1. Check your Alert Table. It compiles a list of every error or success process that has run in Infoplus. Use the filters to search for errors and see if there are any themes or recurring errors. See if you can address these errors now so they do not escalate during the Holiday rush. 
      2. Check your Shopping Cart Connection Log. Are you seeing any recurring errors that can be solved now, before the holiday season?
      3. Check your API Log table. Are you receiving any errors? Does data seem to be flowing as expected between Infoplus and your other systems?

      Step 7: Review the New FAQ/Troubleshooting Articles in Knowledge Base

      We recently launched a new section in the Infoplus Knowledge Base dedicated to Troubleshooting common issues and answering Frequently Asked Questions about common topics in the application. This is a great resource for searching for answers before you submit a ticket and wait for a response. You will find some useful tools and tips to solve issues that our Support team regularly assists customers with. 

      Covered Topics Include: 

      • Smart Documents
      • Orders
      • Inventory
      • Shopping Carts
      • Fulfillment
      • Picking
      • Shipping/EasyPost/Parcel

      Use this link to navigate to either the FAQ Page or the Troubleshooting Page for each of the above topics: