Explanation and Use-Cases
Secondary shipments, in general, are for when a customer doesn't need to see the tracking information. This should be thought of in the sense of secondary as opposed to primary, rather than the "second shipment".
In a practical sense, these are primarily for if you need to do a shipment from the distributor to your store or from one of your stores to another one of your stores.
Example:
Certain distributors either don't dropship or won't dropship particular product. In these cases, in order to get the product to your customer, or to their selected FFL in the case of firearms, you will need to create a secondary shipment from the distributor to your store, and then a primary shipment from your store to the customer. The customer will only receive the tracking information from the primary shipment.
How is Inventory Handled with Secondary Shipments?
When you check the "Secondary Shipment" box, it will display this warning text:
A secondary shipment will not affect inventory, will not mark order items as shipped, and is not limited to items not yet shipped.
Distributor Inventory
Distributor Inventory is handled ENTIRELY by the distributor feeds. They tell us the inventory, and we set the inventory accordingly. When the inventory ships from the distributor it is up to them to deduct the inventory from the feed.
When the inventory arrives at your store, this should be added in receiving via coreSTORE if you are utilizing coreSTORE. This will add the product to your electronic bound book (where applicable) in coreSTORE as well. Alternatively, if you are not utilizing coreSTORE, you should manually add this product into coreFORCE via product inventory maintenance (Products > Products > Product Inventory).
Finishing the shipment
From here, you will be able to create a primary shipment. Simply choose your store location that houses the inventory you received, and create a shipment as usual. This will deduct the inventory immediately. If you choose to complete the order in coreFORCE, this will complete the order in coreSTORE. Make sure, if it is a firearm, to add the serial number so the disposition will be created in the bound book in coreSTORE.
The customer will then receive the tracking information as usual.
Fixing Mistakes
Please note that if you create the primary shipment FIRST, you will not be able to go back and create a secondary shipment. If you mess this up, you will need to delete the original shipment, manually adjust inventory anywhere it might need to be adjusted, and create your new primary shipment to the customer.
Additional Scenarios and Use-cases
Create a Return Label in coreFORCE