Reserve items

You can reserve items for sales orders, purchase orders, service orders, assembly orders, transfer orders, and production orders. You can also reserve items in inventory or inbound on open document or journal lines. You do this on the Reservation page.

Each line you open to reserve items on the Reservation page displays information about one type of line (sales, purchase, or journal) or inventory entry. The lines describe how many items are available to be reserved from each type of line or entry.

Tip

Based on the quantities you’ve reserved in inventory, Business Central displays a status on the documents so that you’re quickly aware of the next step. For example, to indicate that you can ship a sales order or start to work on a project, assembly, or production order. The status also helps reduce the risk of accidental partial shipments or hold-ups due to missing stock for production and assembly orders.

The Reserved from stock field can help you understand whether you can ship or pick for a specific order or order line. For lines, the Reserved from stock field is available on FactBoxes. To access the information for the entire order, the field is on the Statistics page.

Reserve items for sales

The following procedure describes how to reserve items from a sales order. The steps are similar for purchase, service, transfer, and assembly orders.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Sales Orders, then choose the related link.

  2. Choose the sales order.

  3. On the Lines FastTab, choose the Reserve action. The Reservation page opens.

  4. Select the line you want to reserve the items from.

  5. Choose one of the following actions.

    Function Description
    Auto Reserve To automatically reserve items on the Reservation page.
    Reserve from Current Line To reserve the items from the document on the line you have selected.
    Cancel Reservation from Current Line To cancel reservation of the items in the document on the line you've selected.

Note

If item tracking lines exist for the sales order, the reservation system will take you through special steps. Learn more in the To reserve a specific serial or lot number section.

Reserve an item for a production order line

You can reserve items for production orders. You have to distinguish between production order lines, meaning the parent item, and production order components.

In the following procedure, a firm planned production order is used.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Firm Planned Prod. Order, then choose the related link.
  2. Open the firm planned production order you want to reserve parent items for.
  3. Select the relevant production order line.
  4. On the Lines FastTab, in the Functions group, choose the Reserve action.
  5. On the Reservation page, select the Sales Line, Order Line, then choose the Reserve from Current Line action.

The quantity you entered in the firm planned production order line is now reserved.

Reserve items for production order components

You can reserve items for production orders. You have to distinguish between production order lines, meaning the parent item, and production order components.

In the following procedure, a firm planned production order is used.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Firm Planned Prod. Order, then choose the related link.
  2. Open the firm planned production order you want to reserve component items for.
  3. Select the relevant production order line.
  4. On the Lines FastTab, choose Line, then choose Components.
  5. Select the relevant component line.
  6. On the Lines FastTab, choose the Reserve action.
  7. On the Reservation page, select a line, then choose the Reserve from Current Line action.

The quantity you entered in the firm planned production component line is now reserved.

Reserve items in bulk

Use the Reservation Worksheet page to reserve and allocate incoming goods in bulk. For example, bulk reservations can help ensure that quantities are available for your sales and production orders. You can have multiple batches for different purposes. For example, you might allocate production orders on a weekly basis but reserve daily for sales.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Reservation Worksheet, then choose the related link.

  2. Choose the Get Demand action. The Get Demand to Reserve page opens.

  3. On the Get Demand to Reserve page, specify the kind of demand you want to reserve from available inventory.

  4. Fill in the filters as necessary. Hover over a field to read a short description.

  5. Optional: To allocate the items right away, choose the Allocate action.

  6. On the Allocation Policy page, choose a policy for each step.

    Allocation policy Description
    Basic (No Conflicts) Allocates stock to a demand if there are no conflicts and the demand can be fully covered. For example, you have sales order A with a quantity of 10, and a job with a quantity of 7. If you have 20 in stock, both demands receive full quantity. If your stock is 12, no stock is allocated. You must manually allocate the quantity.
    Equally Distributes available stock to demand equally. For example, you have a sales order with a quantity of 10, and a job with a quantity of 7. If your stock level is 20, then both demands will receive full quantity. If your stock is 12, then both demands will get 6.
    By Customer Priority Distribution based on the Priority field on the Customer Card page. In cases of low inventory quantities, Business Central supplies higher-priority customers first.
  7. To reserve all lines where Accept is turned on, choose the Make reservation action.

Change a reservation

You can change an item reservation.

  1. From the document line you made the reservation from, on the Lines FastTab, choose the Reserve action.
  2. On the Reservation page, choose the Reservation Entries action.
  3. On the Reservation Entries page, update the Quantity field on the line you want to change.
  4. Confirm the subsequent message by choosing the OK button.

Cancel a reservation

You can cancel an item reservation.

  1. From the document line you want to cancel a reservation from, on the Lines FastTab, choose the Reserve action.
  2. On the Reservation page, choose the Reservation Entries action on the Lines FastTab.
  3. On the Reservation Entries page, choose the Cancel Reservation action.
  4. Confirm the subsequent message by choosing the Yes button.

Reserve a specific serial or lot number

From outbound documents for item-tracked items, such as sales orders or production component lists, you can reserve specific serial or lot numbers. For example, reserving specific serial or lot numbers can be useful in the following situations:

  • If you need production components from a specific lot to ensure consistency with earlier production batches.
  • Because a customer has requested a specific serial number.

Learn more at Work with Serial and Lot Numbers.

This practice is referred to as a specific reservation, because you reserve from the quantity of item X that belongs to lot X. In contrast, if you reserve only from quantities of item X, then it's simply a normal, non-specific, reservation. Learn more at Design Details - Item Tracking and Reservations.

The following procedure is based on a sales order.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Sales Orders, and then select the related link.
  2. Create a sales order line for an item-tracked item.
  3. Assign serial and lot numbers to the sales order line. Learn more at Work with Serial and Lot Numbers.
  4. On the sales order line, choose the Reserve action.
  5. Choose the Yes button to reserve specific serial or lot numbers.
  6. On the Item Tracking List page, select the serial and lot number combination you have assigned.
  7. Choose the OK button to open the Reservation page showing only supply with the specified item tracking number. If there are any non-specific reservations on any of the item tracking numbers you've specified for this line, you're informed of the quantity that has already been reserved.
  8. Choose either the Auto Reserve or the Reserve from Current Line action to create the reservation of the specific item tracking numbers.

See also

Inventory
Design Details: Reservation, Order Tracking, and Action Messaging
Design Details: Item Tracking and Reservations
Work with Serial and Lot Numbers
Work with Business Central

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