When Honda switched their IT systems last year they implemented some business rule changes that are impactful on how dealers need to manage ordering particularly around managing back orders and making sure back ordered items are freighted appropriately, sea vs air freight.

C9 now contains changes that potentially streamline some pain points around this. It has taken a few iterations but following process might be useful.

Breaking down the process:

• Put everything on stock order by default
• Before sending an order to honda identify items likely to go onto backorder, and relocate those items onto a daily order.
• Send your stock order.
• Send your daily order.

Step 1 - putting everything on stock order by default

• spares -> utilities - > add/edit franchise
• Select Honda franchise
• Goto pack/ordering tab
• Select option 'Both stock and daily orders' (Default stock), so that ordinarily when you order stuff it goes onto Stock

Step 2 - Identify items likely to go onto backorder

This step is where most of work in c9 recently has gone to streamline things. Latest version of c9 contains a streamlined magician check with ability to move bits around before sending. To do this:

In order book, highlight the order. Press Send action and pick magician check

Now this pops up a screen where c9 will check each part against SAP. Generally should only take a few second to scan all items. Normally c9s magician check for Honda SAP is slow taking 10+ seconds per part, but managed to make it quicker by only grabbing availability figures on this screen. So it returns as '?' for price data.

In the above example, the piston kit cannot be fully supplied. You need 7, Honda have 5.  So highlight the item, click on 'Move Part' button and then move it onto a daily order instead.

What you can also do is click option 'Check other c9 dealers' and the screen will tell you other dealers that have it as an alternative to backordering from Honda.

Step 3 / 4 - Send orders.

As per normal.

Caveats / warnings

Magician checking in c9 is not something that is formally supported by the distributor, it isn't part of their published API, so the data c9 grabs here is not assured by the distributor (unlike the ordering API).

There is possibility that you might be trying to order parts other Honda dealers might be simultaneously considering getting, so what magician says is available may not actually be there when you hit the submit button and you might miss out.

End result is it is possible for stuff to still go on backorder for stock orders. It should be rare but it may still in theory happen. Longer term, the distributor needs to provide a robust process to provide assurances backorders end up on planes, not boats for stuff you need in a hurry. New features in c9 so mostly provide this but possible gaps still exist.