Customer product reservations

Customer product reservations represent a commitment by you to always keep a certain quantity of a product on hand for a specific customer. This agreement may stipulate that the customer must order an expected quantity within a period of time, such as one year, an expected quantity per order, or total expected quantity within a period.

Based on your agreement with your customer, you can set up ordering controls for the product to ensure that you maintain enough quantities on hand to satisfy not only the customer you are reserving product for, but any other customers who might order it.

Setup

Products are designated as reserved for a customer in Product Customer Reservation/Forecast Setup. Use this function to define reservation contract start and end dates for a customer or shipto for one or more products. When a reservation is created and made active, the Reserve Quantity for each product is updated on the reservation record based on the product’s Net Available quantity in Product Warehouse Product Setup. The Reserved Quantity in Product Warehouse Product Setup is also updated by Reserved Quantity in the Product Customer Reservation/Forecast Setup.

When a reservation is inactivated or deleted, the Reserve Quantity for each product in Product Customer Reservation/Forecast Setup is removed, and the Reserved Quantity in Product Warehouse Product Setup is reduced by the same amount. The Net Available is increased, making the reserved stock available to others.

Note: Only one active reservation is allowed per customer shipto/warehouse combination. For example, if you reserve product 123 for your customer’s shipto location ABC Mfg-Downtown from your Main warehouse, you cannot create an additional active reservation for the same Customer Shipto and Warehouse record combination. You can have multiple, unique products on a single reservation record.

You cannot create a customer product reservation for any of these products:

Build-on-demand kit component
Tally component
Do not reorder
Order as needed
Direct ship
Labor
Inactive
Superseded

Products with an ARP Type of Central Warehouse, Warehouse, and Vendor only can be reserved. Products replenished through VMI, Kit, or VA are not allowed.

If a product is changed from an active stock item to one of the listed product types, and then specified on a sales order, the product is not checked for an active reservation. You must delete or inactivate the reservation record manually to remove the reserved quantity from the Net Available quantity in Product Warehouse Product Setup to make the stock available to other customers.

Copying reservation records

If you copy a Product Customer Reservation/Forecast Setup record, you click Copy Product Detail Records to copy all Product Detail records from the original reservation record to the new one. The Reserved Quantity is cleared for each product initially, then re-set based upon each product’s Net Available quantity in Product Warehouse Product Setup when you activate the new reservation. Review all Product Detail records for the new reservation before you activate it. If you copy a reservation to a new contract for the same customer/shipto, only changing the dates of the contract, and you want all of the same products on the new reservation, leave the new reservation inactive until you inactivate the old reservation. This ensure that the Available amount in Product Warehouse Product Setup is updated correctly.

Selling reserved stock

When you add a line to an order using single-line entry in Sales Order Entry for a product with an active Product Customer Reservation/Forecast Setup record, at least one of these results occurs:

If the reservation record is for the customer on the order, and no other customers have a reservation for that product, you have full access to the quantities available for that customer and product. The Net Available on the line reflects the Reserved Quantity for that reservation. The CR indicator is displayed next to the Net Available on the Line or Extended view when an active reservation has been found for that line item.
If a reservation record exists for the customer on the order, and one or more other customers have a reserve on that product, the quantity available reflects only the amount available to the original customer. If the ordered amount is greater than the quantity available, the quantity is short for the line, you can click Customer Reservations to view the other customers’ reserve amounts to see if any amounts can be pulled for the current order. Overriding another product reservation requires authorization in SA Administration Authorization Security and the Allow Pull Quantity must be selected in Product Customer Reservation/Forecast Setup.
If the order is short, and other reservations exist for the product but you are not allowed to pull from those reservations, you are blocked from borrowing reserved stock.
When a line item is created or updated and contains an active reservation where the item is set to Replenish Stock, if there is adequate Net Available for the product in Product Warehouse Product Setup, the required amount is pulled from the Net Available to maintain or complete the Reserved Quantity in the reservation record. If adequate Net Available amounts are not available, and the reservation is set up to replenish stock, the product is included when your buyer reviews RRARs in purchase and transfer demand centers.

If you borrow stock from another customer’s product reservation, the overridden reservation record’s Reserved Quantity is adjusted when the line item is created. You can only pull stock from another reservation when in add mode on the line. After the line is created, the reservation pulling stock gets adjusted immediately. It updates the Total Quantity Sold on the original reservation record, not the record the stock was borrowed from.

If you use multi-line entry or the Shopping List, the CR indicator is displayed on each line with an active reservation. You can also access the Customer Reservations lookup from the Shopping List window. For multi-line entry, if the reservation is short, a warning message is displayed in the Messages column of the grid.

Regardless of how a line is created, if an active reservation is found for the product, the reservation record information is stored on the sales order line. This information includes a record pointer to the active reservation, an indicator if the operator pulled stock from another reservation (override), and a pointer to the override reservation (if applicable).

When you ship the order, if a line has a short reservation and the quantity shipped on the line is not zero, this message is displayed:

WARNING: Quantity Short on Line With Customer Reservation

To resolve this, you must unship the order and maintain the line in Sales Order Entry.

Returning reserved items

If a customer returns a product on an active product reservation, and the return line is tied to an original invoice, the reservation detail from the original invoice is copied to the return line. During invoice processing, the Quantity Sold is decreased on the Product Customer Reservation/Forecast Setup record.

Monitoring customer product reservations

You can view a product’s active reservations in Sales Order Inquiry. Specify a Customer Reservations Contract to limit the display to sales orders with lines that are associated with a specific reservation contract. Select Customer Reservations Override Qty to limit the orders to those with an override quantity. These are orders where the customer’s reservation record was short the required quantity and stock was borrowed from another customer’s reservation record.

In Customer Pricing Inquiry, access the Customer Reservations lookup to view existing reservation records for the product. The Available quantity shows a CR indicator next to the amount and reflects the stock available to that customer or ship to. It is the adjusted available quantity.

You can also access the Customer Reservations lookup in Product Availability Inquiry to review products that have active reservations in Product Customer Reservation/Forecast Setup. If there is insufficient quantity for the product in the selected warehouse, the Qty Short for Reservations amount is displayed above the lookup button. This amount is obtained from any reservation records for a warehouse product where the Replenish Stock option is selected and active reservations where the current date falls within the Start and Expire Date range on the reservation.

Use the Product Customer Reservations Report to review Product Customer Reservation/Forecast Setup records. You can select options to see records based on their status, either Active or Inactive, whether they have passed their Expire Date, and to view all of the products that are reserved for customer/shiptos. For products that are past their Expire Date, you can choose to inactivate or remove them. You can also compare the Reserved Quantity against the Required Quantity, and determine which products are short.

Alternate warehouse

The system only honors the reservation quantity for the product in the warehouse specified on the order header. If you fill stock for a product with an active reservation in the warehouse on the order with quantities from an alternate warehouse, the Reserved Quantity amount in Product Customer Reservation/Forecast Setup or Product Warehouse Product Setup is not updated. The Total Sales on the Product Customer Reservation/Forecast Setup record is updated. The active reservation is stored on the line, and a warning is displayed if the quantity is short.

Deallocating

You cannot deallocate stock from a sales order with an active product reservation.