Receipting stock for sales back orders into a particular location
Overview
One of the best practices for Readysell is to receipt stock for sales back orders into a back order location. So that the stock is not put in the warehouse and supplied on other sales.
Example
We are finding that where a Customer order has multiple back ordered products and particularly where one product is delayed and only having Max Shipments set to 2, that product is being put back on the shelf but is being sold before the delayed product has been delivered. We then have to back order another product, delaying the order even further.
We are also trying to manage outstanding back orders where one or more products are taking longer than normal to be delivered. When this happens we want to deliver what we can, instead of waiting for what could be a week or more for a product to be deleted.
How do you suggest we address these issues
How do we implement this?
But if you have restricted the number of shipments for a customer. You are going to get some back orders that you can't ship right away. In those cases:
- Create a location called 'backorder'. See user guide:
- When you are processing a receipt, you can drag the quantity ordered to the receipt line an give it some bold colour so it get's noticed. Then tell your team to change the location to 'Backorder' on the receipt line.
- When the receipt is processed, the stock will go to the 'backorder' location. It will still get allocated to the oldest order, this will usually be the back order
- Tell your team to only pick stock for back orders from the 'backorder' location. (Note that you can split lines on receipts if you want to put part of the stock received in the back order location).
- On the PURREC screen I have made any line that has a qty on outstanding back order>0 go BOLD. That way the operator knows its for a back order and to not put it away..
- Also add the qty on outstanding backorder to the purchase receipt lines, so they know how many will be needed.
- Instruct your staff to to not pick from the back order location for picking slips on the first picking slip for any order, only to pick from the back order location for picking slips that are for back orders.
- Instruct your staff to always try to pick from the back orders from the pallet, then from the back order location
- Have the same person receipting/picking where possible, so they know what item are in our back order hold bay so problem is not so prevalent but I do understand fully the gap and think the best solution is an automated stock allocation for outstanding back orders to backorder location that overrides primary location.
Best practice is to pick directly from the pallet for most back orders and use allocated purchases for special cases where possible:
- Using automatic warehousing to release the picking slips when the receipt is posted
- Having a way to tell the picking slips are back ordrer picking slips, by splitting them. See:
- Picking the back orders directly from the pallet when goods are received. This skips the step of having to move back orders to a back order area. See:
- You still sometimes purchase goods for a particular customer. When you need this level of control we suggest the allocated purchase feature, see user guide:
Note:
If the person doing the receipt splits the receipt line, the system will log the back order receipt to the back order location. You can also set the back order location to be in a different zone. So it splits on the picking slip and shows at the start or the end. The stock in the back order location will still allocate. But the person picking it can out of stock the like if this is not a back order picking slip.- If you make the back order location somewhere near the receipting area, it will be fast to move stock to the back order location and fast to pick from it.
- Most of the time the backorder stock receipt will allocate to the oldest sale, so most of the time it will not come up on the first shipment for new orders.