How to identify when articles are ready to ship to the ZFS warehouse

For partners using ZFS, it is crucial to understand when in the onboarding process an article is ready to be shipped to the warehouse. The short answer to this question is: it is ready when the article has a Zalando Article Variant (SKU). In this article you can read more about the tools and methods to check if an article can be shipped, and the KPI Zalando measures in this process.

A new article (new color variant) has to follow four consecutive steps to get ready for Zalando once the article data has arrived from the provider (colored grey below).

1. Automated validation (red)

2. Manual validation of article master data (orange)

3. Manual validation of all onsite-related data (yellow)

4. Article is onboarded and ready to sell (green)

You can find out more information about each of the steps in the Article Status Codes definition article here.

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  Article status code definitions and updates

After the second manual validation step, (step three in the process, colored yellow above), the Zalando Article Variant (SKU) is created and the article is ready to be shipped to the warehouse. Please bear in mind that only the approved sizes (meaning sizes with a Zalando Article Variant) can be shipped. For example, if an article contains five sizes, and only three are approved, only these three sizes are ready to be received. The status of the article, which you can find in the Article Status Overview (ASO) in zDirect, will start with either JET or ZA.

• If it starts with JET, the article is awaiting final manual review, or requires further information from the partners. This means that it still needs to be approved in the third (yellow) step.

  • When an article is missing information in this stage of the process, the Zalando team will reach out by email. We strongly encourage partners to respond as quickly as possible, because if Zalando does not receive a response within seven days, the article will be marked as JETREJ.

• If the status code starts with ZA, the article is correctly onboarded and ready to go live as soon as it arrives at the warehouse. For information on all of the article status codes, please check here.

  • Please be aware that ZABLO articles have a longer Time to Online (TTO) process due to the incorrect season being assigned to them or quality control, for example. We recommend that ZABLO codes are corrected on the partner side before the stock is sent, so that the receiving process is quicker and smoother.

You can find out how to correct articles at any step of the onboarding process here. And you can find a list of all of the article status codes plus their definitions as a downloadable PDF in the Download section of this article.

In summary:

• In order for the articles to be received and stowed in the warehouse, the second validation step, colored orange in the visual, must be completed as articles have a Zalando Article Variant (SKU) at this point.

• For the article to be available online, it is necessary to also complete the third validation step, colored yellow. The articles can still be shipped and stored in the Zalando warehouse and will be online once the article status changes into ZA.

The Article Status Overview in zDirect can be used to identify shippable articles.

1. Once logged in to zDirect, go to the Articles tab. As shippable articles can be also found under “BLOCKED” or “IN REVIEW” status, it is recommended to use the “ALL” tab;

2. Download the report by clicking on the download icon on the bottom left corner;

3. In this file, filter for the articles that do have a Zalando Variant Size.

4. This leaves you with a report for all articles for which you can send a Shipping Notice for your ZFS deliveries (either through the API or ZPU, depending on your setup).