You can use stock allocation to reserve available inventory for specific sales orders, ensuring the right quantities are set aside for fulfilment. Allocating stock doesn't mean it's physically on hand, and understanding this distinction helps you manage your sales orders, purchase orders, and inventory accurately.
Over-allocating or mismanaging stock can lead to issues such as incomplete assemblies, parked sales orders, or shipment delays.
Manage allocation on a sales order
You can manually allocate and deallocate stock on a sales order at any time, without deleting the order or removing the product from it.
Assemblies and warehouse transfers work differently. Any product included in these transactions is allocated by default, and you can't deallocate that stock the way you can on a sales order.
To allocate or deallocate stock from a sales order, follow the steps below.
Open the sales order.
In the top right corner, click Allocate or Deallocate.
When stock is allocated to a sales order, the button shows Deallocate. When stock isn't allocated, the button shows Allocate.
😎 Tip: Go to Settings > Company > Settings > System Settings, then turn on the Auto-Allocation option to ensure your sales orders automatically allocate stock upon creation.
Deallocate stock from a sales order
When you deallocate stock from a sales order, this affects your sales orders and inventory in the following ways.
Available quantity: Deallocating removes the allocated quantity, increasing the available quantity for that SKU.
Stock on hand: Deallocating stock doesn't change your stock on hand. Allocation only affects available quantity, not SOH.
Purchase orders: Deallocating a sales order doesn't affect any related purchase orders. The purchase order remains unchanged, and receipting it still increases your stock on hand. You can then reallocate that stock to the sales order.
How sales orders and purchase orders interact
When you receipt a purchase order, your stock on hand increases, which can then increase your available quantity. You can use this increased quantity to reallocate and complete sales orders that were previously deallocated due to insufficient stock.
Find outgoing transactions with allocated stock
To check which sales orders, assemblies, or warehouse transfers a product's allocated stock is reserved for, follow the steps below:
Open the product record.
Click on Allocated Qty in the Details tab.
The Product Allocations report will be displayed, pre-filtered for the product, listing open transactions and allocated quantities.
🤓 Tip: Use the Allocated To filter in the Product Allocations report to review allocations by outgoing transaction.
Frequently asked questions
Does deallocating stock affect shipping?
Does deallocating stock affect shipping?
Deallocating stock doesn't affect your stock on hand, which is what's used for shipping. Only your available quantity changes when you deallocate.
Can I complete an invoice if stock is over-allocated?
Can I complete an invoice if stock is over-allocated?
Yes, sales invoices do not require any stock on hand to be available to be completed; you only need there to be stock available when dispatching the sales order's shipment.