Decide what is promised, and when
Commit stock at confirmation
Why this step
The simplest policy: a confirmed order owns its material immediately. It suits a factory that sells short-lead jobs and wants no argument about who the profile on rack four belongs to.
What this does
With At Confirmation — the setting every operation type on this system ships with — the goods are claimed the moment the order is confirmed. Confirm a sales order, open its delivery: if the units were on the shelf, they are already reserved and the transfer is Ready. Nobody else's Check Availability can take them now.
Before you start
- The operation type's Reservation Method set to At Confirmation (Inventory › Configuration › Operations Types) — the shipped default.
- Stock on hand — the method promises an attempt, not a result.
Watching it work
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01
Confirm a sales order for a stocked product.
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02
Open the delivery from the order's smart button: the state is already Ready and each line's Quantity equals its Demand.
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03
Sell more than is on the shelf and confirm again: this time the delivery sits at Waiting with a red Not Available pill — what existed was reserved, the shortfall was not, and no message announced it.
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04
Receive the missing goods. Validating a receipt automatically re-runs reservation for waiting transfers of the same products, so the delivery turns Ready on its own — no one has to click anything.
What it means day to day
At Confirmation favours certainty over flexibility: first order confirmed, first served. A quotation confirmed for delivery in six weeks locks its material today, and an urgent order confirmed tomorrow finds the shelf legally empty. That is the trade you accepted; when it bites, either release the far-future reservation by hand (⚙ › Unreserve on the transfer) or move the operation type to Before scheduled date. One more behaviour worth knowing: when a partial delivery is validated and a backorder is created, the backorder re-reserves immediately too.
On finished-goods deliveries this system goes one step further than standard: the production module replaces the automatic, arbitrary reservation with lines pinned to the exact produced units — each line carries the serial number of the very window or door manufactured for that order, and the delivery refuses to validate until the Delivery QC inspection passes ("Complete and pass the Delivery QC inspection before validating this finished-goods delivery."). Do not "fix" those serial-pinned lines by unreserving them — you would trade the customer's actual units for whatever is oldest on the shelf.
Troubleshooting
The delivery reserved nothing and nobody was told — correct behaviour: reservation is silent when stock is short. The red pills and the Waiting state are the signal.
A delivery turned Ready by itself overnight — a receipt or an unreserve elsewhere freed the goods, and the automatic re-assignment picked them up. That is the feature.
A finished-goods delivery will not validate — the Delivery QC guard above; finish the inspection first.
Common mistakes
- Confirming quotations early "to be safe" — under At Confirmation every early confirmation is an early stock claim.
- Unreserving a serial-pinned finished-goods line to free material — those serials belong to that customer's order.
- Assuming Ready means shipped-quality complete — it means reserved; picked quantities are still recorded at validation.
Checkpoint
Confirming an order reserves its stock, and the availability on every other order updates.