1. Purpose
Work out why a single line on an order will not allocate when the Inventory screen says the stock is there, get that order moving today, and decide whether the cause needs fixing for good. Covers the two readings that account for almost every case: the stock is somewhere allocation is not allowed to look, or it is already promised to earlier orders.
2. Scope
Orders that hold a ship task and pick tasks but stay unallocated, where the product still shows units on hand. An order sitting in Open with no tasks at all is a different problem, covered by SWI-017. Reading the Inventory screen's columns is covered by SWI-004, and this document assumes those definitions.
3. Roles & Responsibilities
Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|
Shift lead or account manager | Reads the order and decides which of the two causes applies |
Warehouse or inventory lead | Owns where stock is put away, and whether a location is pickable |
3PL admin | Owns the pickable flag on the location and any allocation rule that overrides it |
4. When you need this
One line on an order shows Unallocated while the product still reports units on hand.
A whole order will not move to a mission, and only one SKU on it looks wrong.
Stock has recently been received or moved, and orders that used to allocate have stopped.
A receipt was put away into a reserve, overstock or holding area rather than a pick face.
5. Key concept: on hand, available and allocatable are three different numbers
The Inventory screen answers "how much do we own". Allocation answers "how much can be given to an order right now", and it is a narrower question. Stock can be present, counted and correct, and still be unreachable.
What people assume | What actually happens |
|---|---|
If the screen shows stock available, an order can use it. | Allocation only sources locations marked Pickable. Units in a non-pickable location are counted in Reserved and subtracted from Allocatable, which is Available + Safety + Unallocated − Reserved. |
Reserved means somebody has claimed those units. | Reserved is simply the total sitting in non-pickable locations. Nothing has claimed it. Committed is the column that means promised to an open order. |
There are units on the pick face, so the order will find them. | Availability is worked out per location, as the units in that location minus the units already promised to open picks there. A pick face holding stock can still offer nothing. |
Allocating by hand follows the same rules as the automatic pass. | It does not. A manual pin can take stock from a non-pickable location. No automatic strategy ever will. |
Read the line's own badge first. Allocatable means stock covers the line and it is waiting to be given locations, so allocating is all it needs. Unallocated means nothing is reachable, and the rest of this document applies.
6. Procedure
6A. Read the cause
Open the order and find the line badged Unallocated. Note its SKU and the quantity ordered.
Go to Products, then Inventory, and search that SKU.
Compare two columns. If Reserved is large enough to cover what the order needs, the stock exists but is sitting in one or more non-pickable locations. That is the first cause.
If Reserved is small and Committed is large, the stock is already promised to earlier orders. That is the second cause, and no setting will conjure more. Either bring stock in, or free it by cancelling or shorting an earlier order.
To see exactly where the units are, open the SKU and read its locations. A location listed with stock that allocation never offers is a non-pickable one. Confirm it under Warehouses, where the location's Pickable setting is shown.
6B. Allocate this order now
Use this when the stock is in a non-pickable location and the order has to move today.
If the shipment is on a mission, remove it from the mission first. Pick locations cannot be changed while it is missioned.
On the order, open the ship task and choose Allocate.
Choose Manual Allocation, then continue to the allocation screen.
On the line you are fixing, open Filters and tick Include non-pickable locations. Reserve and overstock spots then appear as choices.
Pin the location holding the stock, entering the quantity the order needs.
Leave every other line unpinned. Anything unpinned is allocated automatically by the strategy chosen on the same screen.
Confirm.
6C. Stop it recurring
A pin fixes one order. The next order for that SKU meets the same wall, so choose one of these as well.
Move the stock onto a pick face. The right answer when the location is genuinely reserve or overstock and the pick face has simply run dry. See SWI-002.
Make the location pickable. The right answer when the location was never meant to be held back, which is common where a receipt was put away somewhere convenient rather than somewhere pickable. See SWI-001, section 5C.
Spread the units across pick faces rather than dropping them all into one, so a single location is not carrying every order for that SKU.
7. Verification
The line's badge changes from Unallocated to Allocated, and the pick shows a location.
The order leaves Unallocated and becomes eligible for the next mission generation.
On the Inventory screen the units move out of Reserved and into Committed, because they are now promised to an order.
8. Constraints and caveats
A pin still needs the pinned location to hold enough. Availability there is the units in that location minus the units already promised to open picks at it, so a location that looks full on paper can refuse a pin.
Pinning is per order and leaves nothing behind. It is a way through today, not a fix, which is why section 6C exists.
Changing Pickable on a location that already holds stock moves those units between the Available, Safety and Reserved columns immediately. Expect the Inventory screen to shift. See SWI-004.
Tote-type locations are forced to non-pickable automatically and are not candidates for section 6C. Stock sitting in a tote is recovered a different way, per SWI-009.
An allocation rule can be set to allow non-pickable locations for the orders it matches, which changes the automatic behaviour described in section 5. Check your rules before concluding a location is unreachable.
Nothing on the order states which of the two causes applies. Section 6A is a manual reading, so treat a recurring one as worth reporting to Ship Side Kick support.
9. Worked example
A 3PL receives a large purchase order for a client and puts the whole receipt away in a single holding area near the dock, intending to break it down later. Orders for those SKUs continue to be created and begin stalling.
Observation | Reading |
|---|---|
One line on an order reads Unallocated while the product reports a healthy quantity on hand | On hand counts every location. The order can only use locations allocation is allowed to source. |
Reserved on the Inventory screen is large, and roughly matches the size of the recent receipt | The receipt is sitting in a location that is not pickable. The stock is correct and counted, and simply out of reach. |
The pick faces for those SKUs hold far less than the orders in the queue need | The pick faces are running down because nothing is replenishing them from the receipt. |
Other lines on the same order allocate normally | Only the SKUs from that receipt are affected, which confirms the cause is where the stock sits rather than anything about the order. |
Pinning the holding area on one order allocates it straight away | The manual path ignores the pickable setting. Useful for the order in front of you, and it changes nothing for the next one. |
Resolution: the urgent orders are pinned to the holding area so they ship on time, then the receipt is broken down onto pick faces across several locations. Once the units are pickable, the remaining orders allocate on their own and no further pinning is needed.
10. Related documents
SWI-004 — Read the Inventory Screen, for what each column counts
SWI-001 — Set Up Warehouse Storage Locations, for the Pickable setting
SWI-002 — Move Inventory Between Locations, for putting stock on a pick face
SWI-009 — Recover Stock Stranded in Picking Totes
SWI-017 — Recover an Order Stuck in Open With No Tasks