Receive and deliver in two steps

Every warehouse in this installation ships as Receive and Store (1 step) and Deliver (1 step), and the Multi-Step Routes setting that offers anything else is switched off. This article therefore describes a configuration you can move to, not the one you are running. If you open Inventory ▸ Configuration ▸ Warehouse Management ▸ Warehouses today you will find a form with a name, a short name and an address and no shipment options at all — the whole Warehouse Configuration tab appears only once Multi-Step Routes is on.

The same is visible in the transfers. Today every receipt runs Vendors to WH/Stock in one hop, and every delivery runs WH/Stock to Customers in one hop. After the change the receipt would stop at WH/Input and the delivery would start from WH/Output. The From and To columns that make this visible are themselves part of Storage Locations, so they appear on the transfer lists only once that setting is on.

The two extra locations already exist in the database from the day the warehouse was created; choosing a multi-step mode simply activates them. They sit beside WH/Stock under the warehouse, not inside it, which is the whole point: goods parked in them are on hand but outside the location a delivery reserves from.

Two operation types are activated with them. They are not the generic Internal Transfers type: each is its own type with its own reference sequence, so the second step is recognisable at a glance in any list.

The routes are rebuilt at the same time and renamed after the mode — Receive in 2 steps (input + stock) and Deliver in 2 steps (pick + ship). You never edit them by hand for a standard mode; they are what the warehouse setting produces.

Confirming a purchase order creates one transfer, the receipt, exactly as it does today. The difference is where it ends: the receipt's destination is WH/Input instead of WH/Stock.

Validate the receipt when the lorry is unloaded and the count agrees. At that moment, and not before, WindoorERP creates the second transfer — a Storage transfer from WH/Input to WH/Stock, already Ready. Validate that one when the goods are actually racked. Stock rises then.

Between the two validations the goods are in an odd and perfectly correct state: they count towards the product's on-hand quantity, because WH/Input is an internal location, but they cannot be reserved for a delivery, because deliveries reserve from WH/Stock. A job waiting on those goods stays Waiting until the storage transfer is done. That is the mode working, not a fault.

Finding the storage transfer

The purchase order will not lead you to it. The Receipt smart button on the order counts only the transfers the order itself created — the receipt — and it stays at one however many steps the warehouse uses. Use one of these instead:

• The Storage card on the Inventory overview, whose button reads N To Process.
• Inventory ▸ Operations ▸ Transfers ▸ Internal, which lists every internal type together.
• A search on Source Document: the storage transfer carries the purchase order's reference, so searching for P00058 finds both halves.

Confirming a sales order also creates one transfer, and it is the Pick, not the delivery. This surprises people who expect to see the delivery order immediately: the Delivery smart button on the sales order reads 1 at confirmation, becomes 2 once the pick is validated, and only then shows both documents.

Process the pick first. It moves goods from WH/Stock to WH/Output and, on validation, produces the delivery order from WH/Output to the customer. Validate that when the lorry leaves.

Because the delivery order does not exist until the pick is done, you will not see a delivery sitting in Waiting Another Operation the way older versions of the software behaved. If you cannot find a delivery order for a confirmed sales order, the pick has not been validated yet.

Every one of them behaves like the transfer you already know: the same Validate, the same Check Availability, the same statuses, and the same backorder question if you move less than the line demands. All four operation types ship with Create Backorder set to Ask.