Question

Allow/Disallow split inventory locations

  • 28 April 2022
  • 7 replies
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We sell a large and varied catalog of items, a segment of which is rope sold by the foot - one issue we deal with is getting shipments to be generated without splitting the location. When a customer orders 100ft of rope they generally want a single 100ft section and we don’t want pickers to pull from multiple locations to fulfill the line item. If we have stock in multiple locations, it would ideally drive the pick list to a single location based on the pick priority that has sufficient quantity for the entire line item. No split allowed

 

I’ve wrapped my head around this multiple times trying to sort out the most clever way to force Acumatica not to split location IDs on these items or locations but failed to come up with anything that solves the issue. Anyone got a clever solution they’re already using? 

 

Ideally, there would be a setting at the item level (class or inventory item) or even at the location ID that would say allow/disallow split locations. 


7 replies

Userlevel 5
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This comes up pretty regularly, and I don’t really have a good answer for you. You could manually allocate the material to that order from the location, or you could do a unit conversion to different lengths if they are constant.

if someone out there has a good solution, I would love to hear it, as I come across this often. Pretty much anything with a lot number could potentially be an issue. Being able to force the system to use a single lot number would be ideal, or in your case, single pick location.

Userlevel 4
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We also have this problem right now.  I’m not sure “Use Item Default Location for Picking” setting will solve this problem or not because I don’t have time to test on it. If you have chance to test on it, please let me know and also I will keep you updated if I finished the test first.  

Userlevel 4
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Use Item Default Location for Picking only controls the pick priority one step further - but we still have the same problem. If the Default Location has an insufficient quantity for the line item it will still split the pick across multiple locations with the Default Location being the first it pulls from

Userlevel 4
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Yes. So I’m thinking to set up a inventory shortage process to transfer item from storage location to primary location. Then ask workers always picking item from primary location or set storage location to sales not allowed.  Our picking process maybe different with yours and not fitted.  For me, the shipment line splitting and Divisible UOM is really a big problem. 

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Since we’re dealing with a linear product that’s cut to length, what would be ideal for us is to setup locations that do allow sales but contain our small quantities (end of reel remnants) and if the quantity is sufficient it would be at a higher pick priority and shipments would be driven there first, if it was insufficient it would go up the line until it found a single location with enough available to fulfill the entire quantity. 

 

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For the rope, is your base UOM foot?  Knowing that you have 1,234 feet of rope in stock split between three locations doesn’t tell you how many coils that you have, their lengths, or which piece is best to fulfill an order.

I’ve seen companies set the item to lot trace and set a different lot number per reel.  That way, the inventory summary would show the reels separately, and their respective lengths.  You would need to allocate a specific lot or lots to drive the picker to the correct reels.

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Yes - we tend to sell per foot. Each manufacturer has different spool lengths we buy in (some in feet, some in meters) and unit conversions handle all that very nicely. Our sales team can see the purchase units quick and on occasion we even sell by the full spool - that really hasn’t been much of an issue for us though.

We’re primarily online retail, and this is just one portion of a larger catalog. Orders come in though our commerce connector and need to move to the warehouse as fast as possible through scheduled tasks. For most of our inventory we’re able to have orders picked/packed/shipped within hours of them coming in online - Lot tracing would probably add a lot of administrative complexity, slow down that process and really wouldn’t solve much for us since shipments could still split lots if a person wasn’t careful. 

 

Seems to me that it’s a feature Acumatica should consider - I’m not sure which would fit the greater needs beyond our use case, but having some control at either the stock item or at the warehouse location to indicate that quantities shouldn’t be split would be ideal. I would probably want it at the item level if I could choose and would be even better if it was definable at the item class

 

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