On April 19th, 2020 we launched a significant update to sales orders in WholeCell. This update included new features that made it easier to sell your inventory. It also introduced several new concepts for existing WholeCell users.
In this article we describe the new concepts in WholeCell sales orders and the functional changes that have been introduced. For a walk-through of how sales orders work, see: http://help.wholecell.io/en/articles/3940902-how-sales-orders-work
New Concepts in this Update
Committed and Uncommitted Inventory
Before this update you could only add specific, serialized inventory items to a sales order in WholeCell. Now we've introduced the concept of "uncommitted inventory" so that you can add any quantity of a particular product without needing to "commit" specific serialized inventory items to create a sales order.
When you create a sales order now, you'll be able to select products from your catalog and add them to your sales order in any quantity without needing to select specific inventory items. The act of assigning specific inventory items to a sales order is called "committing inventory". Once a specific inventory item has been added to a sales order to fulfill uncommitted items, that specific unit is now "committed".
Sales Order Items
When you add uncommitted products to a sales order in a particular quantity, those products are now referred to as "sales order items".
Overcommitted
A sales order item is "overcommitted" when more specific inventory items have been committed to the sales order than the quantity of that product that's been added as sales order items.
Update Sales Order Items to Match Committed Inventory
Now that there are two states of inventory on sales orders (uncommitted and committed), sometimes you'll want a simple way to update your sales order items to match the committed inventory you've added to an order.
For example, if you've created an order for 100 uncommitted items but your operations team discovers that two are missing or broken when they go to retrieve them in your warehouse, you now only have 98 that are sellable. If your operations team commits the 98 sellable items, you can now click on "Update Sales Order Items to Match Committed Inventory" in the sales order more menu. This will update your 100 sales order items to 98 to match the specific committed inventory on the sales order.
The "Update Sales Order Items to Match Committed Inventory" button can decrease, increase, or split sales order items to match under-commitment, overcommitment, and inventory edits that change a committed inventory's product.
Functional Changes in this Update
You can now choose whether or not receiving an inventory item on an RMA will adjust the quantity of the matching sales order item. You can adjust this behavior in Sales Order Settings.
You can now choose whether or not deleting a sold inventory item will adjust the quantity of the matching sales order item. You can adjust this behavior in Sales Order Settings.
Sales orders can now prevent overcommitment of sales order items or incorrect inventory commitment (the commitment of inventory products that have not been added to sales order items). You can adjust this behavior in Sales Order Settings.
If an inventory item is committed to a sales order, editing that item's grade, damages, or product attributes will not change the sales order item on a sales order it is sold on. The committed inventory item will change, but the sales order item won’t. You can click “Update Order Items to Match Committed Inventory” to reconcile the sales order items to match the current committed inventory on the sales order.
Clicking “Update Order Items to Match Committed Inventory” updates the sales order items to match the current committed inventory.
Financial Analytics throughout WholeCell remains based on committed inventory as it has been. Creating a sales order for 100 sales order items will not affect your financial analytics until you commit specific inventory to the sales order.