Allocating Inventory

What is inventory allocation?

The act of allocating inventory to sales orders reserves stocked products for that customer, this prevents them from being sold to someone else. Until inventory is allocated, the on hand inventory level will not be reduced and the inventory could potentially be allocated to another sale, leaving no inventory to fulfil this order.

How do I allocate inventory?

Inventory will automatically be allocated to the goods-out note when you fulfil an order, or if you want to reserve inventory on an order before fulfilling, you can manually allocate inventory on individual or batches of orders, as well as across all orders with unallocated items. Likewise, you can also unallocate inventory to free it up for another sale. Brightpearl will automatically allocate inventory to orders from your webstore or eBay.

Manually allocate/un-allocate Inventory on an Individual Order

1. Open the Order Edit screen.
2. To allocate/deallocate inventory for all lines, click the Allocate all or Deallocate all link. The allocated amount will be displayed just below each item description.
3. You can allocate/un-allocate lines individually, by amending the allocated figure beneath the line description.
4. Click Save to finish.

If some items are not in inventory you can move them to a Back Order and/or clone the sale to a Purchase Order.

Batch Allocation

The batch allocation allows you to select multiple sales orders and allocate inventory against them.

1. Go to Sales > Recent Sales/Quotes.
2. Tick the checkbox next to each order for allocation.
3. Click the Allocate button at the top of the listing.
4. In the pop-up window select Allocate orders / Un-allocate orders radio button.
5. Click the Allocate selected orders button.

The pop-up window will be closed and a message box will be displayed confirming whether inventory has been allocated. Inventory will not be allocated where there is no on hand quantity. Notice the allocation icon (the tick) will also be updated.

Allocate/Un-allocate Stock to All Orders

You can allocate inventory across all your orders prioritising by creation date, delivery date or order tax date, and whether that should be in ascending or descending order. Inventory will not be allocated if there is none on hand.

1. Go to Products > Allocate/deallocate all.
2. Select how the system should prioritise Sales Orders.
3. Click the Allocate inventory button to allocate inventory against all orders.
4. Click the Clear Stock Allocations button to clear all allocations.

Note: If you have a large number of open orders this process may take some time.

How do I know if inventory has been allocated?

You can quickly recognise whether inventory has been allocated in part, in full or not at all, by the small block icon next to the Order Status in your Sales Listing or in the individual Sales Order. This is called the "allocation status" of the order; it can be used as a filter on the sales list to see which orders are part or fully allocated.