Decide what is promised, and when
Choose your reservation moment
Why this step
Reserving early guarantees a job its material and freezes stock nobody else can touch. Reserving late keeps the yard flexible and risks a shortage on the day. There is no universally right answer, only the one that suits how far ahead you sell.
What this does
Reserving ties specific units in the warehouse to a specific transfer, so nobody else can take them. Reserve too early and material sits locked for a job that ships next month while an urgent one goes short; reserve too late and the goods are gone when the picker arrives. The Reservation Method sets that policy — not per product, not per warehouse, but per operation type: your delivery orders can reserve one way while internal transfers reserve another.
Before you start
- Access to Inventory configuration (the Administrator access right on Inventory).
- A decision per operation type: is stock promised the moment an order confirms, on a countdown before the ship date, or only when a person says so?
Setting the policy
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01
Go to Inventory › Configuration › Operations Types and open the type — Delivery Orders is the one that matters most.
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02
On the General tab, pick a Reservation Method: At Confirmation, Manually, or Before scheduled date.
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03
If you picked Before scheduled date, fill the two day counts that appear — days before the scheduled date, and a separate (usually larger) count for starred transfers.
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04
Save. The change is not only for future orders: switching to Before scheduled date re-stamps a reservation date on every open move of that type, and switching away clears it.
The three methods — and what this system runs
At Confirmation reserves the instant the transfer is confirmed — for a delivery, the moment the sales order confirms. Whatever is on hand is locked to the order; what is missing waits. Manually reserves nothing, ever, until someone opens the transfer and clicks Check Availability — the right choice when the same profile is wanted by three jobs and a human should pick the winner. Before scheduled date holds off, then reserves automatically once the transfer is within the configured number of days of its scheduled date — material stays free for whatever comes up in the meantime, but is still locked in before the load is picked.
On this system, all three operation types — Receipts, Delivery Orders, Internal Transfers — ship set to At Confirmation, and Receipts do not show the field at all: incoming goods are not reserved from anyone. So out of the box, confirming a sales order reserves its delivery immediately; the other two methods are there when you decide the default fights you.
Reading what the reservation did
Reserving is silent about failure. A transfer whose goods are all on hand goes to Ready; one with nothing available stays at Waiting; one with part of the demand becomes Partially Available at the move level. No message tells you which happened — the state and the colours do: the Product Availability field beside the scheduled date reads Available in green, Exp plus a date in yellow when incoming stock will cover it, or Not Available in red, and each product line carries the same pill. Priority matters too: the star on a transfer means it is served first when several transfers compete for the same units.
Troubleshooting
An order confirmed but its delivery is still Waiting — reservation ran and found nothing to take. Nothing is wrong with the mechanism; there is no stock. Check the line's red pill and the product's forecast.
Stock sits reserved for far-future orders — that is what At Confirmation does. Either unreserve the far-future transfers by hand, or switch the operation type to Before scheduled date with a sensible day count.
The Reservation Method field is missing on Receipts — by design; incoming goods have nothing to reserve.
Two transfers want the same units — the starred one wins when the automatic passes run; for a manual tie-break, unreserve the loser and Check Availability on the winner.
Common mistakes
- Treating the method as a per-product setting — it is per operation type, and one delivery type covers every delivery.
- Reading "Ready" as "everything is available" — with partial reservation a transfer can be partially covered; read the line pills, not just the state.
- Expecting an error when reservation finds nothing — there is none; silence is the failure mode.
Checkpoint
You can state your reservation policy in one sentence and say what it costs you.