When we enter orders, if the items are in stock we print them as Picking Slips on a spec sheet titled Picking List and send the paperwork out to be picked and shipped (or delivered). When the items are not in stock we print them as Confirmations on a spec sheet titled Back Order and place them in a Back Order bin. When new product is received every few days we have to pull the Back Orders from the bin and send them out to be picked. On any given day we may have a stack of a hundreds of Back Orders in the bin and hundreds of Picking Lists in circulation that have not yet been shipped or invoiced. In Adagio Order Entry, these documents are the same in that they both contain items on order that have not been shipped. I am searching for a way to report on these documents separately. To release back orders we currently use Order Action to produce a report that shows orders with unshipped items that shows quantities available. The problem with this report is that it not only shows all the Back Orders, but it also shows all the Picking Lists. It takes hours, sometimes days, to go through the report and locate the paperwork. The only way that I have figured out to refine this report to Back Orders only is by selecting the criteria "Print Status - Confirmation Printed". This works only if everyone remembers to print their Back Orders and if they always print them correctly to a Confirmation and not accidentally to a Picking Slip. Once an order is printed to a Picking Slip, the print status says, "Picking Slip Printed" even if you later printed the order to a Confirmation.

Does anyone have any ideas on how we can get better control on unshipped orders? I want to be able to release back orders more quickly and efficiently while also ensuring that we aren't losing any orders completely by not printing a full report and searching for all the unshipped paperwork.

Hi Susan

Here's the idea that comes to my mind. If an order is shippable, enter the quantities in the Shipped field as well as in the Ordered field, and then post the order as an order, not as an invoice (you can set this to be the default in Profile).

Then you will be able to easily distinguish between shippable orders and back orders. You will also be saving your clerk a step when it comes time to invoice.

I think that the Order Action report can select on back orders that are "unshipped" and ignore back orders that are "to be shipped" and this would simplify your search.

Test this out for a couple of orders and let us know if this helps.

Steve

Hi Steve,

This sounds like a really good idea. Your suggestion may actually solve 2 problems we are having. 1. Releasing Back Orders. 2. Selling product that is already sold to someone else.

Question: Can an order that has been posted with shipped quantites have items added, changed or deleted later?

What we currently do is enter the orders on Picking Slips (without shipped quantities) then hold the orders for a few days (or more) until the next delivery for that particular customer, then we phone them, add more items, change items, quantities, etc., then invoice and deliver.

I tried this out with some test data and I see that you CAN edit, delete, change etc. after the orders have been posted in the same way we do now with unshipped items.

This may solve a lot of issues for us! Thanks.

Oh I just realized that this only solves the problem of 1. Releasing Back Orders. 2. Selling product that is already sold to someone else remains the same problem. Even when you have "shipped" quantities and posted the order, they still appear on inventory as "On SO". You can still sell those quantities to someone else.

Hi Susan,

Do you allow inventory to go negative?

No, we prefer to allow invoicing of only what the system says we have in stock.

If allocation of stock to a customer is really important, you could set up a location as a "staging area" from which you would actually ship to the customer.
When the order is taken, transfer the items for the order to that location.
Still follow Steve's suggestion about "shipped" quantities.

Note that this involves more data entry, so it may not be practical to do for all orders, but might be important to do for some major customers.