Using default zones on workstations to control locations on POS sale shipments

Owned by John Nairn (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Mar 12, 2018
8 min read

Overview 

Workstations can have a default zone specified. The default zone can be used to make sale shipment lines entered from workstations in the POS area of the business put locations from the POS zone onto sale shipments. Preventing POS sale shipments from automatically selecting stock out of the warehouse.

It is important to recognise the workstation default zone does not effect stock allocation and does not effect the "Pick" button or the "Pick" process when it is run by automatic warehousing.

I expect the system should allow you to set the locations in the retail area to quarantine, but still select from those locations when you manually enter a sale shipment without hitting the pick button. Locations that are in the POS zone should be put on the sale shipment line if you type in a sale shipment from a workstation with a default zone of the POS zone and the location in the pos zone has stock. Even if that location has a supply type of quarantine.

We need this to stock the warehouse picking form the POS zone while still allowing the POS zone locations to default to a location in the POS zone if any of the POS zone locations have stock.

Procedure

A retail area in the business which is/could have all it's location in a zone say "retail". All other workstations, other than POS workstations, would normally have the default zone remaining blank.

  • Let's consider an example where some pos workstations exist and the default zone on those workstations is set to a zone named "POS". 
    • Some locations that have stock are in the "POS" zone 
    • When any sale shipments are typed in from a workstation where the "default zone" is specified, in this case "POS". Then only locations that are in the "POS" zone and which currently have stock will be considered to be placed on the sale shipment line.
    • If none of the locations in the "POS" zone have stock on hand when a product is entered on a new sale shipment line. The system will drop back to the standard picking logic and suggest a location in the warehouse that has stock for the product if one exists. As we want to supply the stock to the customer if we can.
    •  When the user tries to complete the shipment, such as from a POS workstation, warn them about a location being empty if there is not enough stock in the location selected for that product to supply the sale shipment line
  •  Pos workstations, when creating sale shipments as for POS transactions, not sale orders. Can have a specific zone associated with the workstation. Then when sale shipment lines are entered, select a location from the specified zone if one exists and leaves the location on the sale shipment line empty if no locations in the specified zone.
  •  Workstations other than the POS workstations are not expected to have a zone
  •  This feature is not intended to effect sale orders. Sales for the warehouse are generally processed as sale orders.
  •  The "pick" process applied to sale shipments is not changed. The pick process assigns stock locations to sale shipment lines when they are created from sale orders by automatic warehousing or when the pick button is pressed on sale shipments. The pick process tries to free up locations, make them empty so they can be reused in the warehouse, by always picking from the location with the least stock first. 
  •  If you don't want the "pick" process to consider any of the locations in the "POS" zone, those locations should have a supply type of "Quarantine". Which will stop the pick process, used by the warehouse sale shipments, from picking stock in the "POS" zone. 

If the user clicks the "Pick" button, when typing a sale shipment in from any workstation, including the workstations in the "POS" zone. All the rules above are ignored. As those special rules only apply to sale shipment lines that are typed into a sale shipment from a workstation that has a default zone specified. Those rules do not replace or change the default logic behind the "PICK" process. So if you press the "Pick" button, or if a sale order is entered from those workstations. The "Pick" process will set locations on the sale shipment lines considering all locations in the business. 

You do not need to put the warehouse workstations into any special zone

You do have to ensure the POS operators do not press the "Pick" button when they enter sale shipments.

Worked examples

Example for a workstation setup with a default zone being used to enter sale shipments as point of sale transactions

  • I am on workstation 7. I want to assign a zone for POS. So I create a zone and name it POS by selecting administration, zones from the Navigation panel. Then clicking the "New" button to create a new zone. I then put my workstation 7 into the default zone of "POS"
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  • Then I selected a product, it could be any product that you wantt to stock in the warehouse and seperately stock in the retail zone. In this case I picked product "002P". Theproduct which only has stock in the warehouse.


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  • So I have to create a new location for the product in the pos zone. I created a location, it could have any name, but for the sake of this exersize, I named the new location in the pos zone "POS-01", put that location in the "POS" zone
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  • I created a new location for the product, move some of the stock from the warehouse location to the pos location.
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  • I used a stock adjustment to move stock from the warehouse to the new pos location. I could have also used a stock location transfer to do the same thing. I would use the stock location transfer approach if I had a lot of products to change.
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  • I need my sample product to have less stock in the POS location than in the warehouse location.
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  • Now I can test the changes to settings are working for me. By entering a sale shipment for product "0002P" from workstation 7. I am doing several checks:
    • What happens if I enter a sale shipment from workstation 7 for product "002P" and  any stock exists in a location in the pos zone, location "POS-01" to supply the quantiy being shipped. I expect the system to show location "POS-01" on the sale shipment line and it does. See example below:
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  • What happens if I enter a sale shipment from workstation 7 for product "002P", there is stock in a location in the pos zone, but  the stock required is more than in a location in the pos zone, location "POS-01" to supply the quantiy being shipped. I expect the system to show location "POS-01" on the sale shipment line and it does. Any stock is enough, I don't need the POS location to have sufficient stock to supply the full quantity of the shipment. That will be handled manually when I try to complete or finalise the shipment. See example below:
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  • What happens if I enter a sale shipment from workstation 7 for product "002P", there is no stock in any  location in the pos zone for that product. 
    • To this I enter a stock adjustment and set the stock in the retail location "POS-01" for product "0002P" to zero.
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  • I expect the system to suggest one of the warehouse locations if there is no stock in the POS zone. As we want to get the stock to the customer if we can. It does as expected.
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  • Lets try things from the warehouse angle. I expect the pos zone to be fare game to the warehouse unless I set the locations in the POS zone to have a supply type of Quarantine.
  • To test this I set my workstation 7 to have no default zone. So it will behave like the warehouse. Then set the warehouse location to have more stock than the pos location. 
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  • When I enter a sale shipment, the sale shipment line starts as being on the default location. But being in the warehouse. I then press the "Pick" button
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Example of preventing the warehouse from picking stock from the "POS" zone.

  • If I don't want the warehouse to pick from the POS locations. I set the "POS-01" location's supply type to "Quarantine". Then press the pick button again to check this warehouse sale shipment will no longer pick from the location in the pos zone "POS-01".
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  • Now when I press the pick button, the sale shipment keeps trying to pick from the warehouse location, as the POS location is supply type quarantine. Expactly as expected:
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