Reserving inventory on fulfillment workbench

We are getting an increasing requirement to reserve inventory against a specific sales order to prevent other customers taking this stock - sometimes it needs to be inventory that’s in a specific bin which we’ve done some relabelling or repacking work on for that customer. Reserving inventory on fulfillment workbench doesn’t seem to stop it from being allocated to other sales orders (or even give a warning?? - seems strange) and allocating inventory to that sales order doesn’t really work for us because we do automatic allocation and then a customisation chooses all allocated stock and immediately releases it for picking. Is there a slick way of reserving inventory for a specific customer/sales order without allocating it?

Reserving does put it against a sales order release (and take it out of available inventory) but it does not lock the bin/lot/serial number. The result of a reservation is that it puts the demand in the PartAlloc table without a bin but it can still be moved in inventory and any specific location can still be allocated against (if it is unallocated and available inventory).

How are you reserving? All, Primary or Demand Warehouses Only? Can you create a different warehouse and isolate it that way and then use Demand Warehouse Only? If you make sure the sales order release points to this new warehouse that should isolate it.

If it needs to be all in the same warehouse, I don’t know if a way to without some customization.

Ross

Thanks Ross appreciate the response. We tried reserving it in the primary warehouse. We could isolate it in a different warehouse, we’ve actually found it simpler to just put it in a non-nettable bin and basically track it off-system, but then this makes it appear to purchasing that we have less of this part available etc. I guess you’re right that we need to weigh up whether to do some customisation to make this slicker or just isolate it in an alternative warehouse or a non-nettable bin

Thanks

Alex

We use Allocate by Lot - and this does a hard allocation. You can’t over commit the available stock in a given Lot / Bin combination.

Are your parts Lot Tracked?

Reserving is a soft allocation and does not gaurantee it will be there. You need to switch to Allocating, that will lock the inventory to that order only and not allow it to be taken for something else.

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Thanks Mark, we don’t Lot Track our parts at the moment but it’s something we’re looking. Probably needs to get higher on our agenda :slight_smile: