Peak season
Get through BFCM
without the fire drill.
Q4 is where your systems get tested. Orders spike, stock counts drift, temps join the floor, and November's close gets messy. Here's how brands on Fulfil handle each of those, in their own words.
Sound familiar?
What operators told us about last year's peak.
"September, we do code freeze… Q4 peak starts in October."
Miss the window and the switch slips a full year.
"We essentially broke it in Q4… peaks are make and break."
The system that works in March falls over at 4x volume.
"Backorders are a nightmare for us."
Stock counts drift between Shopify, the 3PL, and the spreadsheet, right when you sell the most.
"We're going to receive all of our Black Friday goods in July."
Q4 inventory gets bought months ahead, with cash on the line.
"Content team, website, other people were just picking and shipping."
Everyone ends up in the warehouse, and new hires need weeks to get up to speed.
"I go to family events and I have my laptop with me just on the chances a thing goes wrong."
The ops team spends the long weekend watching for problems instead of planning.
01 / Timing
Switch on your schedule, not the calendar's.
Most brands go live in 8-12 weeks, run by our in-house team on a fixed fee. That leaves room to go live before your freeze, or to evaluate after peak and start in Q1 so you're settled long before the next one.
“The implementation was the fastest of my life. We did it during Q4 in under three months, including holidays and while setting up our new UK entity.”
“I never experienced such a smooth ERP transition. From the moment we launched, there was no disruption to our day-to-day.”
02 / Volume
Peak volume without the crash.
Orders route to the right warehouse or 3PL as they import, and batch picking groups them by SKU so your team works through the queue instead of one order at a time.
“We went from the previous system, where we'd be absolutely thrilled to ship 2,000 orders a day, to hitting at least 6,000 to 7,000 orders in one shift.”
“During peak season, we reached nearly 10,000 shipments in a single day - a 4x increase from the previous year.”
03 / Inventory
Stock you can trust when it matters most.
Every sale, shipment, and receipt updates the same inventory record that Shopify, Amazon, and your 3PLs read from. When stock gets low, it gets low everywhere at once, so you aren't pulling products by hand.
“With NetSuite, daily out-of-stock incidents used to be around 200-500 a day. Now with Fulfil, it's down to one or two a day.”
Inventory accuracy went from below 60% on QuickBooks Desktop and ShipStation to 95-98% on Fulfil.
04 / Forecasting & cash
Buy for Q4 without tying up cash.
Q4 stock gets ordered in July and August. Forecast with seasonality and growth rates, see what's on order and on the water, and sell against what you can build from components instead of stocking every finished good.
“We saw record sales this year and we also really leaned up our holdings too. Being able to sell against buildable is huge.”
05 / Seasonal staff
Temps picking on day one.
The WMS tells each picker which bin to go to and what to scan, so a new hire doesn't need to know the building. Scan checks catch the wrong item before it ships.
“Fulfil's intuitive platform made it possible to rapidly onboard 120 staff during peak season with just a tablet and login.”
“We can hire temps that we don't have to explain much to. Before there was just like, there's no way, we'd have to hire somebody a year in advance just to get them to be able to pick a little.”
06 / Bandwidth
A peak weekend without the panic.
When orders, inventory, and 3PL status live in one system, your team can spot a slow warehouse or a stuck order early, and ask your AI agent instead of pulling reports by hand.
“Our business is up 100% this year. We've been able to connect everything and know where everything is. I'm shocked with the lack of panic at HexClad thanks to Fulfil.”
“Instead of being reactive and fighting fires, we were able to identify issues, identify slowdowns, and find any problems with any 3PLs' fulfillment process ahead of time.”
Plan your go-live around your peak.
A 40-minute walkthrough built around your channels and volumes. No follow-up calls unless you ask.
07 / 3PLs & shipping
When a warehouse falls behind, move the orders.
Change a routing rule and new orders go to a different warehouse or 3PL. If your 3PL runs out and Amazon still has stock, an automation rule can send orders to Amazon MCF instead.
“We saw the orders coming in and knew that our Tennessee warehouse was going to be overloaded. We routed the orders to a different state with no problem at all. There's no way we could have done this before Fulfil.”
“We had about four weeks to do a full integration with a new 3PL partner and a new WMS, and Fulfil made it happen in three weeks, all in the midst of October Prime Day and rolling right into peak.”
08 / Manual work
More orders, not more hands.
Automation rules handle the routine decisions, from routing and batching to holds and label printing, so a weekend sale doesn't turn into a week of manual cleanup.
“We're doing five times the volume already. Our team has only grown in the warehouse by two people. We would have absolutely failed had we just stayed with what we were doing.”
“In the past, before Fulfil, our process of printing labels was extensive. It required at least two to three people. With Fulfil, we were able to cut that down to one person.”
09 / November close
Black Friday in November, shipped in December.
Revenue and COGS post when the shipment goes out, not when the order is placed, so a Black Friday order that ships in December lands in December with its cost. No manual accruals to unwind.
“I think faster month-end close for us is a huge one. We can do things in a more efficient way. Fulfil makes sure sales orders are closed and aligned, making sure our inbound shipments are closed and aligned, making sure everything is tied up at the end of the month.”
“I want all of my data to be in one spot and Fulfil really allows us to do that. We've taken what was a 13-month audit process down to 3 months.”
FAQ
Common questions.
We freeze changes in September. Is it too late to switch this year?
It depends on where you are today. Most brands go live in 8-12 weeks, so a project that starts in the summer can be live and settled before BFCM. Hello Adorn went live in mid-August and ran Black Friday and Cyber Monday on Fulfil.
If your freeze is already close, use the quiet weeks after peak to evaluate and plan, so the project starts in Q1 and you're live well ahead of next year's peak instead of waiting another year.
How long does implementation take?
Most brands go live in 8-12 weeks. Implementations are run by our in-house team, not an outside consultant, on a fixed fee.
Black Friday falls at month-end. Which month does the revenue land in?
Revenue is recognized when control of goods transfers to the customer, typically when shipments are marked "Done" and handed to the carrier. COGS posts with the same shipment, so an order placed on Black Friday that ships in December lands in December with its cost. See revenue recognition.
Can we send overflow orders to Amazon MCF?
Yes. Fulfil sends Shopify, eBay, or other channel orders to Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment from your FBA stock. Automation rules decide when an order goes to MCF, for example when your 3PL is out of a SKU that Amazon still holds. See Amazon.
How fast can seasonal staff start picking?
The WMS walks pickers through each step on a handheld or tablet: which bin to go to, what to scan, and what to pack. Enso Rings pulls staff from other departments during its busy season, and Mejuri onboarded 120 staff for peak with a tablet and a login. See warehouse management.
Go-Live in weeks,
not months.
Tell us when your freeze starts. We'll show you Fulfil on your channels and volumes, and what a go-live before your next peak looks like.