Solutions / Logistics and fulfillment networks

Item level visibility from the dock to the resale channel.

Networks of outsourced warehouses, each running a different WMS. Buildings that refuse returns because it is already too complicated. Overstock stranded in forward stock locations and the cost of bringing it home. Upstream puts the technology in each building so it handles its own returns, with one integration at the business unit.

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Diagram · Many buildings, one integration
Network view
BUSINESS UNITONE INTEGRATIONRETURNS RESOLD IN THE MARKET THEY CAME BACK TOBUILDING 01WMS ABUILDING 02WMS BBUILDING 03WMS CBUILDING 04WMS DBUILDING 05WMS EBUILDING 06WMS F
With Upstream
6 buildings · 6 WMS · 1 integration
Receive
01

At the dock, with or without a record

Identify
02

What it is and what it is worth

Route
03

Where it goes, by your rules

Resell
04

Sold where it recovers the most

Ship
05

Picked and shipped from your system or ours

For a network, every stop applies, inside each building, on that building's own WMS.

01 · What arrives

What lands on the floor.

01

Many buildings, many systems

Every outsourced warehouse runs its own WMS. Anything that has to work across them has to work with none of them.

02

Returns nobody will accept

Warehouses that decline returns outright because handling them is too complicated, so sellers refund and pay the freight home.

03

Overstock in forward stock

Too much inventory positioned for a market that did not buy it, and a bill to repatriate it.

02 · What Upstream does here

Where it applies.

Receive

Item level receipt

Identity and condition from a photograph at receipt, bound to the client, the shipment and the location.

Identify

Blind and unplanned returns

A code on the return label marks it as inbound inventory. The building receives it, photographs it, and shelves it on its own system. Upstream does the rest.

Resell

Disposition and resale in market

Damaged, aged and abandoned inventory routed by rule and resold in the market where it came back, instead of shipped home.

Ship

Warehouse operations

Receipt, put away, task assignment, pick, pack and ship at item level, inside the existing facility, where the facility lacks it.

03 · What you get back

With the money and the record.

01

Returns become inbound inventory

Do not think of it as a return. The building just received inbound material, and Upstream is the seller of record.

02

One integration, not one per seller

A single relationship with the business unit. No enrollment item by item, no opt in per seller.

03

The technology where the box lands

Each warehouse handles its own returns. Nothing is annexed to a central site.

04 · With your systems

Alongside, not instead.

Any WMS

Any WMS with an API

Upstream reads the building's WMS to assign a put away location and attribute the item. The building picks and ships from its own system.

One export

One export per building

Everything the building has touched, once, so every return is matched to the right account.

The label

A code on the label

Set at label creation so the receiving team knows the 3 photographs are all it takes.

05 · Questions

The ones that come up first.

All ten answers →

Do our warehouses have to change their WMS?

No. Upstream works through the WMS API each building already has. The building shelves and ships on its own system.

What about cross border returns?

They are resold in the market where the return occurred, so the seller is paid instead of paying freight home.

How is a seller paid?

Upstream as seller of record collects, then returns proceeds with an attribution report to the business unit, which pays each seller.

Put the technology in the building.

The walkthrough starts with one warehouse and one WMS. It grows from there.

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