Is there anyone out there that has implemented Supply Allocation that would share some info on their setup and how they have implemented it? I am getting help from a consultant but I dont feel they really understand the function (I gather it’s new and I believe they are learning it as they help us) and I also dont think they know how a business works from a cash flow standpoint. Consequently I dont think i’m getting good information on how to properly set up and use this function--everything they keep telling me is that what we want cannot be done at all, but no guidance on a best-practice. I simply want 2 things: 1. I want sales orders and reservation orders with future supply-required-by dates to pull from future supply orders FIRST, and only after the future supply is exhausted to pull from inventory that’s on hand now. I am being told this is not possible because supply allocation always takes from on-hand inventory first. (I thought the whole point of supply allocation was to avoid that?) 2. And, If I have on-hand inventory that is allocated to a future sales order or an order-reservation, I want to be able to place a new supply purchase order and have the reallocation calculation automatically re-allocate the demand to the future supply, leaving the on-hand inventory free for new sales in the interim. I am being told that once on-hand inventory is allocated to a demand order, regardless of the supply-required-by date it is impossible for an automatic recalculation to re-assign that demand to a future supply order, that is must be done manually…which seems quite onerous. This seems like bread and butter simple to me, yet I am being told these things are simply not possible. Can anyone with first-hand experience comment on how they set up supply allocation and maintain it to accomplish this? If our consultant is correct (??) I have a hard time understanding how the supply allocation function is going to accomplish what I need without adding a huge amount of manual work that in my past experience was all automatic. Thanks very much in advance.

we are about to implement Demand planning and MRP, so following this thread

@Dave Furman I'm no expert in Supply Allocation but 1. Not exactly true. In the Order Allocation Strategy, you can select Allocate As Close As Possible to Supply Required by Date. In this case, let's say you have on hand of 100, open PO of 20 with Expected Receipt Date of 12/10 and open SO of 30 with Supply Required Date of 12/15, NetSuite will allocate first the open PO closest to 12/15 before the on hand. 2. Allocation from on hand can still be reallocated via Transactions > Order Management > Allocate Orders. It can be done ad hoc or scheduled as frequent as hourly. Ad hoc isn't that bad too if the logic applies to all items. Ensure though that Future Inventory is enabled, Allocation Type is Reserved (not Firmed) and Allocation Method is as close as possible to supply required by date in the Order Allocation Strategy. We noticed that even if you use the Order Allocation page, NS does not allocate FIRST AUTOMATICALLY the FUTURE supply orders with expected receipt date AFTER the supply required date PRIOR TO on hand, which is fine with us because we want to be able to ship on time. In my example above, if you have a new open PO with expected receipt date of 12/16, NS will still prioritize the open POs with ERD BEFORE the supply required date, then on hand, then open POs with ERD AFTER the supply required date. This is just based on our experience.

@Luis, thank you very much! A little clarification from me below--any chance I can coerce you into taking a look? I have everything configured as you suggested already. THANK YOU in advance! As long as the future supply is sufficient before the demand is applied (orders or reservations), it is working properly. The issue I am running into is mainly on re-allocating after the on-hand supply is tapped into due to future supply being insufficient. 1. once on-hand inventory is tapped into, netsuite is allocating on-hand supply first (using all available stock first) and only then moving to future supply. What I want to happen is for netsuite to still use future supply first until exhausted, and only then take the minimum possible from on-hand inventory. Do you know if there is a setting that will do this? Our consultant says there is not, that once on-hand inventory is tapped into it will always exhaust that before tapping into future supply, regardless of your allocation strategy. This is the result I got when testing, but that seems 180-degrees wrong. Does this match your experience? 2. After I have exhausted future supply and tapped into on-hand inventory, even after I add a new supply purchase order to arrive before the SRB date on the demand order, I have been unable to allocate away from on-hand inventory. It does not work automatically as I had expected, and I cant even do it using the reallocation page. At this point I am dealing mainly with Reservation Orders. Consultant is saying once tapped-into that I need to delete and re-enter the reservation order to get it to “drop” the allocation of on-hand inventory in favor of the future supply. Since the reservations only accept 1 item at a time I will have thousands of reservation orders, and this seems like a hugely onerous step even via CSV import. Is this something you have encountered or does this sound wrong to you? If you’ve encountered this, how have you dealt with it?