Deliver goods to a customer
Check availability, pack and validate a delivery, and understand what the system does when stock is short, held or expired.
Required permission: inventory.operate
Before you begin
- A confirmed sales order raises a draft delivery from the company default warehouse (the warehouse marked Ships orders that name no warehouse). If no warehouse is the default, orders that name no warehouse raise no delivery.
- Stock must be available. Held, quarantined, expired or recalled stock cannot be delivered.
Steps
- Open Inventory > Warehouse > Deliveries and open the delivery. To create one by hand click New delivery, choose the Warehouse and Customer, set Scheduled for and add lines.
- Click Confirm. The delivery becomes Waiting or Ready.
- Click Check availability. The system reserves stock. A line without enough stock stays waiting.
- If packing is required for this operation, click Pack into a new carton and pack every line. See Work with tasks, waves, handling units and the scanner.
- For lot or serial products, pick the lot or serial on each line.
- Click Validate and enter the Done quantity for each line.
- If you ship less than demanded, choose Create a backorder or Cancel the rest.
- Click Print for the delivery note.
What happens next
- The delivery is Done. On hand falls by the quantity shipped.
- The stock leaves at the running average cost. A journal entry debits cost of goods sold and credits Inventory.
- The sales order shows the quantity delivered. A backorder is a new delivery for the remainder.
Worked example
Stock is 8 units at an average cost of AED 12.00. A delivery asks for 5. You validate with Done = 5. Stock is 3 and AED 60.00 of cost of goods sold is posted.
When stock would go below zero
What happens depends on the stock policy for the product, category, warehouse or company (a product rule wins over a category rule, then warehouse, then the company default):
| Policy | Result when delivering more than on hand |
|---|---|
| Block | Refused: 'Insufficient stock for the product at the location: on hand 2, needed 5.' |
| Warn | Allowed with a warning that the product is now below zero. |
| Approval | Refused until someone holding stock.negative.approve clicks Approve below zero and validate. |
| Allow | Allowed. |
Lot-tracked, serial-tracked and FIFO-costed products are always refused below zero whatever the policy says.
Good to know
- Held and expired lots cannot ship. A lot on hold, quarantined or recalled is refused. An expired lot is refused with a message that it is expired. A lot past its retest date cannot ship until the retest is recorded. Shelf-life rules can also require a minimum remaining life for a customer.
- Frozen locations. If an open cycle count freezes the location, validation is refused until the count is finished.
- Backdating. A delivery dated before today may need
stock.backdate, depending on the policy. - Packing is not skipped. If the operation says items must be packed, validation is refused with a message that the product is not packed.
- Split and merge. Split moves part of an open delivery to a new one. Merge combines open deliveries to the same customer and place. A done delivery cannot be merged.
- Cancel. A ready delivery can be cancelled and its reservations are released. A done delivery cannot be cancelled; use a customer return. See Handle customer and vendor returns.
- Multi-step shipping. With two or three ship steps, Pick and Pack transfers are raised and linked. The delivery waits until they are done.
- Several deliveries compete for scarce stock. Use allocation. See Plan supply.