What is the most efficient way of satisfying customer orders when you dont have enough inventory ?

Replan Back Orders is an existing feature in Acumaitca, but it does not work for when you have the Require Stock Allocation option enabled on an order type and does not handle customer/order priority. This was a major shortfall we had to workaround.

My company worked with our VAR to design a customization for this. The customization allows us to allocate/deallocate product in a bulk process from one screen. Filters can be modified on the fly to target various scenarios. Customers have a default priority level for all created orders and individual sales orders can have this overridden to a specified value. There’s always additional stuff we want to add and tweak, but it’s been exceptionally useful in managing product allocations without clicking into the allocations screen for each SOLine we want to alter the allocations on.

@jmorgan one of my first Acumatica customization (circa 2010-2011, Acumatica 2.2 -- a long time ago!) was a dynamic stock allocation mass-processing screen. The stock allocation feature was actually added to the distribution module by Acumatica following a request made by our customer, and my responsibility was to implement the mass processing screen.

The customer was a distributor of board game and kids toys and would take orders for the holiday season months in advance, without actually knowing what would be delivered or what would be the most in-demand items. If a major publication suddenly recommended a game every parent would like to buy one, and stores would fight for allocation. 

Through the custom mass processing allocation screen, they were able to allocate inventory proportionally, ensuring fair allocation to all the retailers. The screen included a filter by customer customer class, ship date and order priority so it was also possible to go very granular -- let’s say you have an agreement with a specific retailer that they go first, you could run the process first for all the locations of a given retailer, then do another round of allocation with the remaining inventory.

Although some of the logic is highly specific to the customer I was working with back then I think the underlying idea applies to other businesses. I tried to revive this project a few years ago while I was at Acumatica Labs but other projects took priority. If you or someone on your team has Acumatica dev skills I’ll be happy to share what I have...

Replan Back Orders is an existing feature in Acumaitca, but it does not work for when you have the Require Stock Allocation option enabled on an order type and does not handle customer/order priority. This was a major shortfall we had to workaround.

My company worked with our VAR to design a customization for this. The customization allows us to allocate/deallocate product in a bulk process from one screen. Filters can be modified on the fly to target various scenarios. Customers have a default priority level for all created orders and individual sales orders can have this overridden to a specified value. There’s always additional stuff we want to add and tweak, but it’s been exceptionally useful in managing product allocations without clicking into the allocations screen for each SOLine we want to alter the allocations on.

 

Very smart. Very useful. The question now is how to get/buy your customization? Any suggestions?

As others indicated customization wld suffice for orders which had no stock and not linked to SO-PO, you either have to allocate manually or have a process screen customized to auto-allocate based on your custom requirements.
 

We did a small customization to our client who needed similar functionality to take orders in Spring and then fulfill those orders in Fall when stock arrives based on FIFO and order date.

No single solution fits everybody’s needs so customization to rescue. 

At the 2019 Summit I presented an inventory allocation tool built by Aktion for one of their customers. If Gabriel’s solution doesn’t work out, private message me and I can send you some details about who to contact.

@Doug Johnson I looked at what I have (back from the Acumatica 2.2 days) and it contains too much customer-specific logic to be reused as-is. It sounds like what @Neil Cantral shared would work. I haven’t seen Aktion’s solution, but I’m sure everyone is trying to solve the same type of need!

@Dana Moffat do you know when Acumatica plans to come out with a solution for this? 
It seems like a “Process Allocations” screen would be a pretty easy thing to release. And while there are a few customizations out there, none of them are perfect, and it just adds $ unnecessarily to customers’ Acumatica bill. In other words, I think Acumatica needs to solve for this since it is way too inefficient to allocate order lines manually. Please prioritize this, thanks!

Hi @Dana Moffat ,

If you need any additional info on use cases and requirements, let me know, as a mass allocation function is something I could desperately use and will help anyway I can to keep this moving. 

Thanks

Hi @Dana Moffat - I have a client looking for auto-allocation once stock items are received. I am wondering if I should explore the customization route, perhaps from Aktion, or should I wait for this to be released in the core product, if in case it’s coming in soon.

I’ll also further explore the process listed here - 

Just looking for the next best steps. 

Thanks. 

Thanks Dana. I’ll review options with client. 

Hi @joemejia ,this feature was released in the 2023R2 release this past fall.

To find out more about it, please see this section in the release notes link below: Inventory and Order Management: Improvements in Allocation Management.