You can automatically reserve inventory quantities for a specific sales order. This means that reserved inventory cannot be withdrawn from the warehouse for other orders unless the inventory reservation, or part of the inventory reservation is cancelled.

Reasons for reserving inventory:

• First ordered, first delivered, which means that customers get available items in the same order that they place their orders.

• Shortage of items due to a long or unknown delivery time from the vendor. You may want to ensure that certain customers or orders get delivery of the first available items.

• Certain customers and certain types of orders have first priority for delivery.

• Items with serial or batch numbers. You can mark certain items that have been or will be delivered to specific orders.

• Specially ordered items that are reserved for certain orders.

• Production orders. You can, for example, mark items that are produced for and adjusted to specific orders.

Inventory can be automatically reserved when a new order line is created, or inventory can be reserved manually on the individual orders. This is a parameter in the Accounts receivable parametersform. The setup applies when a new order is created, but the setup on individual orders, or even on specific order lines, can also be changed in the Sales orderform.

Only items and bills of materials (BOMs) can be reserved for sales orders. Services cannot be reserved because there is no on-hand inventory.

Both physical on-hand inventory and ordered, but not yet received, inventory can be reserved.

If a larger quantity is reserved than the on-hand inventory contains, a warning appears that says it is not possible to reserve such a large quantity. You can then choose either to reserve the quantity anyway, or you can change the ordered quantity. The quantity can either be reserved or changed. If more items are reserved than are available, then the shortage is covered the next time items are available for delivery.