Importers bringing in product from overseas often need to allocate product on open purchase orders or on a container to new sales orders that come in, in order to match supply and demand and provide customers with specific dates as to when product will be available to fulfill orders.
Previously, NetSuite only provided cursory commitment functionality, as can be seen in the screenshot below of the preference for commitments. In this scenario, product could only be committed to sales orders once it was received into a location, at which point, it would follow one of the rules below, such as commit by order priority, expected ship date, or transaction date.
The last few releases brought new functionality to allow an end-user to allocate product from open purchase orders, transfer orders, work orders, or inbound shipments (future inventory) to sales orders as sales orders are placed. NetSuite adds a new record called “Order Allocation Strategy”. This record defines the allocation rules the system follows when a sales order is entered for this item. The allocation strategy is selected on the sales order transaction line, and determines the allocation logic. The available options for the strategy record can be seen in the screenshot below. This includes the types of future transactions to include, when to best allocate inventory (now, or closer to when the customer requests it), and whether the allocation is soft or firm.
Once an order is entered, the system allocates according to these rules. It will look at available inventory in stock, as well as the transactions outlined above, to allocate future inventory to the sales order.
After the allocation is created, the user can either manually, or run an automated process, to review the commitments and reallocate orders according to various criteria. This can include the quantity on the order, the quantity fulfilled already, as well as a few other options to determine which orders to prioritize an allocate inventory against.
Finally, if an end user needs to commit specific quantities against specific orders when that product comes in, the reallocate items interface provides a mechanism to do so. Below is a screenshot where the user can select which orders to generate commitments against, and the specific quantities to do so at.
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