Sales order reservations
You can change reservations on sales orders. For example, you might need to cancel reservations in the following situations:
The priority of existing reservations must change. For example, if an important customer places a large order with your company and requests immediate delivery, you might need to cancel some reservations to deliver to that customer.
Deliveries are unfulfilled or canceled, and you need to share the on-hand inventory among customers who are waiting for items.
Items weren't reserved when the sales order was created because the person who created the sales order planned to manually reserve items later.
Reserve inventory quantities
You can reserve inventory quantities automatically for a specific sales order. By doing so, you can't withdraw reserved inventory from the warehouse for other orders unless you cancel the inventory reservation or part of the inventory reservation.
You might consider reserving inventory for:
First ordered, first delivered situations, where customers get available items in the same order in which they place their orders.
Shortage of items due to a long or unknown delivery time from the vendor. You might want to make sure that certain customers or orders get delivery of the first-available items.
Certain customers and certain types of orders that have first priority for delivery.
Items with serial or batch numbers. You can mark certain items that have been or will be delivered to specific orders.
Specially ordered items that are reserved for certain orders.
Production orders. For example, you can mark items that are produced for and adjusted to specific orders.
You can have the system reserve inventory automatically when a new order line is created, or you can reserve inventory manually on the individual orders. This parameter is on the Accounts receivable parameters page. The setup applies when you create a new order, but you can change the setup on individual orders, or on specific order lines, on the Sales order page.
You can only reserve items and bills of materials (BOMs) for sales orders. You can't reserve services because no on-hand inventory exists.
You can reserve physical on-hand inventory and ordered but not yet received inventory.
If you reserve a larger quantity than what the on-hand inventory contains, a warning message appears stating that you can't reserve such a large quantity. Then, you can reserve the quantity anyway or change the ordered quantity. You can reserve or change the quantity. If you reserve more items than are available, the system covers the shortage the next time when items are available for delivery.
Reserve items for sales orders
You can reserve inventory quantities for sales orders when you create or change sales order lines. If the system automatically reserves available inventory quantities, you can't withdraw reserved inventory from the warehouse for any other orders.
Inventory is reserved according to the setup of the following factors:
Manual or automatic reservation
Reserved ordered items or only items on-hand
Warehouse proposal
Date reservation
Item reservations for orders
In the Reservation field on the Accounts receivable parameters page, you can select to reserve items automatically when you create a sales order line or to reserve items manually on the individual order line.
If you select Automatic, the system always automatically reserves items when you create an order line. If you select Manual, you must manually reserve items for the individual order line.
The method of reservation is the same for all orders and items. You can't specify manual reservation for some items and automatic reservation for others. Likewise, you can't specify manual reservation for some orders, customers, and locations, and automatic reservation for other orders, customers, and locations.
If you mix item types, and some are appropriate for manual reservation whereas others are appropriate for automatic reservation, you should select manual reservation.
Typically, the individual legal entity's business structure determines whether inventory items are reserved automatically or manually. For more information, see the following recommendations.
Automatic reservation
We recommend that you use automatic item reservation in the following circumstances:
You want to ensure that units are always reserved for orders when the order line is created so that the items are available on the delivery date.
Items are standard inventory items, meaning that you don't produce, adjust, or purchase items for one specific order. You can pick any quantity of on-hand items for an order.
Deliveries from vendors are uncertain and you have no ongoing receipt of goods. You might want to ensure that you reserve and deliver the items in the same order in which you create the order lines.
The selection from inventory is optional, meaning you don't need to pick a specific batch and serial number for an item until the delivery date.
Manual reservation
We recommend that you use manual item reservation when you:
Don't typically make item reservations when you create order lines.
Mark orders for delivery manually, such as when the system should process items that specific customers order or for special orders first.
Produce, adjust, or purchase items for specific orders. You must pick a specific unit of the on-hand item number for an order.
Don't reserve items in the same order in which you create the order lines.
Must pick a specific batch and serial number for each order.
Must split a limited number of on-hand items between orders that you manually select.