Making a warehouse fulfil orders

In a shop with one warehouse this page does not apply, because everything is shipped from that building. With two or more warehouses a building can hold the goods and still be passed over, because allocation reads three properties of the warehouse before it looks at stock at all: whether the warehouse is active, whether it is assigned to the sales channel of the order, and whether it has the capability the order requires.

Before you start

The stock has to be on a shelf. Unassigned stock can be picked, but it has no location an operator can be sent to. → Bin locations

A second building has to exist for the question to be relevant. A shop with a single warehouse can skip this page entirely.

1. Make sure the building is active

Stockly → Warehouses → warehouse → General → Active. An inactive warehouse is not visible to allocation, regardless of every setting below.

2. Give it the capability the orders require

Same screen → Ships to customers and Hands goods over on site. An order requires one of the two: dispatch, or a counter the customer walks up to. Which one is required follows from the sourcing rules, and where none are configured every order counts as a shipment.

Switch Ships to customers off only for a location that never dispatches goods, such as a pure storage site or a counter that only hands goods over. A building without the required capability is removed from the candidates before ranking begins. → Sourcing rules

Note

Where no capable building remains, allocation does not refuse the order. The demand still has to be recorded somewhere, so the module allocates it to an incapable building and marks the decision as degraded, which the configuration check then reports.

3. Decide which channels it serves

Stockly → Warehouses → warehouse → General → Assigned sales channels. A warehouse becomes a candidate for a channel by being assigned to it, and the assignment also carries the priority in which the candidates are ranked.

Where a channel has no warehouse assigned to it at all, every active warehouse becomes a candidate for that channel. This is what makes a single-warehouse shop work without any assignment, and it is also why adding the assignment to one building only takes every other building out of that channel. → Sales channels

4. Let it exchange stock, if it should

Two further switches determine whether the building takes part in internal movements. They govern transfers between warehouses and have no bearing on which building an order is allocated to:

Switch	What it allows
Can send stock to other warehouses	the building may be a transfer source
Can receive stock from other warehouses	the building may be a transfer target

A site that only replenishes shops needs the first switch; a shop that never sends anything on needs only the second.

Checking it works

Place an order that only this building can cover. The order is allocated there and appears in the work waiting to be planned in that warehouse.

When an order finds no building

The module reports a finding rather than leaving the situation unstated, and the finding names the cause: a capable building is outside the sales channel, a building is inactive, a capability is switched off, or a delivery rule points at a node that cannot perform the task. Each finding includes the step that resolves it. An order allocated to an incapable building is a finding of this kind, not a decision to overrule. → Configuration integrity

Where to go next

• Sales channels — assignment, priorities and how ties are broken.
• Sourcing rules — when an order needs a specific kind of building.
• Warehouses — everything else on the warehouse card.