Question

Integrating third party WMS with Acumatica - tips, tricks, best practices?

  • 18 August 2022
  • 8 replies
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I am beginning work on a custom integration betewen a third party WMS and Acumatica.

The current paperless picking process in Acumtica seems to be not much more than a way to fill in some fields in the “Shipments” area of Acumatica. You can set the shipping qty of items on the order, set the packacking, etc. But that’s pretty much it.

So it seems that at the point that a Shipment is created and any Hold status released, the order can be transmitted to the WMS for processing. I think it would be cool to have a line-by-line pick status for each item on the shipment, which doesn't appear to be a feature at the moment.

Once the shipment is fully picked, then any packaging can be selected as necessary, and then the shipment can be confirmed once loaded onto a truck or Fedex/UPS.

Anyone have any other ideas of things that need to be filled out by a third party WMS during synch with Acumatica? Obviously similar things need to happen for Purchase Receipts and receiving processes..


8 replies

Userlevel 7
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Couple of points:

  1. In the shipment lines there are ‘Picked Qty’, ‘Packed Qty’, ‘Ordered Qty’ and ‘Shipped Qty’ fields. Although these are not a status field per se, you can determine current status of the line based on comparison of these numbers.
  2. Depending on the WMS, it may also perform other operations, e.g. Physical Inventory, Transfers, Write-offs, etc. So you may want to look into those operations as well.
  3. If you are going to implement the integration using Acumatica REST API, you may want to look into the new version of the default endpoint available in 2022R2. It has some improved Distribution entities that may be helpful, e.g. improved returns, Shipment Packages, Inventory Issues
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@Dmitrii Naumov 

  1. Do you know if the Picked Qty, Packed Qty, Ordered Qty and Shipped Qty and wired in anywhere else? As an example: User picks 2 items from location X in the warehouse. Picked Qty increases by 2 on the shipment line. Does qty of this item on hand decrease by 2 at this point, or does that only happen when shipment is confirmed? What happens if user bails out of the pick process after picking 1 unit when 7 are needed. Does system get stuck at 1 picked, or will it zero out the pick process?
  2. I think transfers is an interesting one. I’m not sure if I want ERP to be in charge of this, WMS, or both. I think I will have to talk to the users to see what makes the most sense.
  3. I think that I may do this using webhooks. My thought is that this wlil give better programmatic flexibility to the solution, and also better error logging where there are issues. What do you think?

 

Thanks,

 

Jonathan

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@rosenjon

  1. It does not affect the availability, as far as I know. Depending on your settings, availability may be deducted ether when you create SO, or when you create Shipment or when you Confirm Shipment/Create IN transactions. 
  2.  
  3. Well, it depends on complexity of operations and amount of code that you are ready to write. I’d say going with REST API is the fastest-to-the-market way to do it. But if you want to have a really complex product with a lot of flexibility, then you can go with WebHooks. 
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@Dmitrii Naumov Fair point. Rest API may be more predictabe and easier to integrate against as a result. I may do both...use REST API where it makes sense, and have a webhook for more challenging integration scenarios.

 

@Dmitrii Naumov Do you know, if choose the option deduct availability when Sales Order is created, but then order is cancelled, does inventory go back to being available?
Edit….Also, I assumed inventory will be deducted when Sales Order is Released, not when it’s created, correct?

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@rosenjon there is no release action for a sales order. So, the qty will be deducted once it is created (if you have the system set up like that).

If you cancel the order the qty goes back to available.

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@Dmitrii Naumov Sorry I should have been more specific. The way we have the system configured currently, when a Sales Order is created, it is “On Hold” by default. So my assumption is that the inventory is not deducted until the Hold is removed, correct?

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@rosenjon Correct, if the SO is on hold, the qty is not deducted

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Hi @rosenjon - did you get all your answers for this one? Thank you!

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