Hold Until Complete
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Contents |
Overview
When orders are placed on back order, in many situations it will make sense to hold the order until all of the items are available so it can ship complete. The current/default CMS behavior is designed to support a "ship asap" model which is better for cash flow and inventory movement but causes problems when trying to reduce the number of shipments for an order, be it for shipping expense or desire to deliver complete to the customer.
In CMS 9.0 we added a Back Order All function to make it easy to force an entire order onto back order, so it can fulfill complete, but it does fall short of allocating stock to an order for the items available now. This prevents the user from being able to fulfill/allocate in a FIFO (first in first out) manner, in other words, allocating to the customers in sequential order of when they purchased.
Hold Until Complete (CMS 9.0.5)
The Hold Until Complete (HUC) feature works in conjunction both with CMS's existing Hold mechanism and Fulfillment Manager. If an order has any items on back order, CMS can place the order on hold using a new HUC hold type when the order is saved. Whether or not the order is placed on HUC will be based on a new Order Entry option indicating if you want orders with back orders placed on HUC automatically. You can override the default and manually set or remove the HUC flag before or after the order is saved (done from the View Invoice screen for the invoice in question).
HUC orders are released/fulfilled using the Fulfillment Manager's Back Order processing. This allows you to have a single list of back order invoices, potentially a mix of HUC and non-HUC back orders, and can fulfill FIFO. No added filter is necessary, just click the radio button for All Orders Shown and then the button for Process Orders.
- Those orders with no HUC flag will fulfill based on settings on the options shown (partial orders can fulfill, partial items can fulfill) and fulfill onto a -2 (or later) invoice as is standard behavior now
- Those with the HUC flag (and no other hold flags) and all items available will fulfill onto the -1 invoice
- If the option for 'Partial Orders can Ship' is selected in Fulfillment Manager, but not all items are available, CMS will allocate them to the waiting HUC orders while leaving the remaining items on back order. In this case the invoice remains on hold until all items have been fulfilled and no payment is created until the final fulfillment.
- When fulfilling the remaining items on an HUC order CMS will set the fulfill date of the invoice to today, allocate remaining stock needed, and create a new payment if needed (the same as any other back order fulfillment) and will remove the HUC hold flag
- HUC PAYMENTS - CMS defaults to, and we recommend, setting an electronic payment (eCheck or credit card) for $0.00 when placing the order. CMS will create an appropriate payment using that payment information for the total order amount when the order is fulfilled. That said, you can take deposits/payments on HUC orders. The HUC hold type is ignored for payment processing so if you desire to apply a down-payment to an HUC order (e.g. layaway), it will be processed today without have to set Bill Delayed or marking the order as shipped. We have noted though that some companies have found reporting issues with accepting payments against unshipped orders or those on hold so you may wish to test this before starting to accept such payments.
Orders set as HUC can be reviewed in the Fulfillment Manager under the tab for Invoices on Hold where hold can be individually reviewed and edited as needed.
Additional enhancements include:
- Orders set as HUC cannot be cancelled and the user will be warned if a cancel is attempted (no affect on return of shipped) - The HUC flag must be removed first by someone with employee permissions to remove that flag.
- Employee permission will be added to indicate who can alter the HUC of an order
- Option in Order Entry, (location tbd, perhaps in the Holds UI) to refresh allocation on the order (so if some new stock has become available, allocations can be updated)
- Add filter to Batch Approvals to allow the limiting of processing to next X payments (display sequence should be FIFO) and should also show a total count of payments in the grid. Should the fulfillment of back orders (release of HUC) release more invoices into your fulfillment flow (printing, picking, shipping) than you want to deal with at once, you can limit how many you authorize which in turn limits how many will be printed (per CMS config.)
- If a user removes the HUC flag from an order, CMS will not reset it on save based on the order entry default
- The HUC hold reason will be displayed on the order (location tbd, likely View Invoice)
- Refreshing allocation option - An option will be available to allocate newly available inventory when editing an order. (stock becomes available after the initial save and you wish to refresh the allocations)
Related Exceptions and Comments
- Orders that are a mix of future ship and back order items cannot be set as HUC
- After fulfillment, there is no record retained to indicate that the order was previously HUC
- Reporting changes are being evaluated for inclusion in CMS version 10. Please contact your NHS Support rep to obtain the latest Crystal invoice template if you'll be using HUC
- No specific option to de-allocate is included although an item or order can be forced onto back order which does deallocate
Phase 2 - CMS 9.0.6
- Automate allocations so newly received stock can be committed to current HUC orders (those already saved but not yet fulfilled/released)
Future Possibilities
- Making the use of HUC conditional based on a global user-specified threshold of Expected Delivery dates for back ordered items (so items coming in soon may be worth holding an order for while others beyond the threshold may not be worth holding an order for.)
- Treating future ships in a similar way with allocations and fulfillments onto -1 (future shipping vs future fulfillment), perhaps a "Hold Until Date"
