About Inventory Allocation Options

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Use this article when you need to understand how InfoPlus decides which location to pull inventory from during fulfillment. Without this context, your settings can conflict and cause unexpected picks. This article does not cover how to build a fulfillment plan step by step. See Create / Edit a Fulfillment Plan for that.

Before You Begin

• Permission level: access to the Locations, Items, and Fulfillment Plans tables
• Prerequisite: locations and items already created in InfoPlus

Understanding Allocation Considerations

Each item's allocation rule determines which of the following fields InfoPlus checks, and in what order. This article explains each field in detail below:

• Location Behavior Type (weighted differently by allocation rule )
• Location Cost (lowest costs first, blank being the best)
• Location Priority (highest priority first, blank being the worst)
• Field Allocation & Sort (only applicable for weak or strict allocation)
• Receipt Distribution Date
• Receipt Received Date
• Receipt PO Number
• Location Sort (Address or Custom Field)
• Receipt IDs

Inventory receipt fields are captured at the time of receipt. If your inventory receipt data needs correcting, you can edit item receipt records.

The Allocation Formula:

Fulfillment Plan Filters + Location Settings + Item Settings = Allocation Results

Tweaking any part of this formula lets you create custom allocation procedures based on item attributes, lines of business, order attributes, and more.

Configuring Fulfillment Plans for Desired Allocation

This section explains the Fulfillment Plan fields that influence allocation and how they interact with each other. You can create as many of these plans as you need to accommodate different workflows.

Fulfillment plan filters are the first thing InfoPlus checks before allocation happens. If a plan has a location smart filter set, allocation is limited to those locations. If you run fulfillment plans automatically, you can also limit which orders get considered with the order smart filter field.

Order Smart Filters apply only to scheduled and manual fulfillment plan runs, run from the scheduled plan or the fulfillment plan table's action menu. InfoPlus only tries to fulfill orders that meet this filter.

Location Smart Filters include or exclude specific locations from the fulfillment plan. They also set the sort order for allocation, so sort and save your filter to match the order you want allocation to happen. Best practice is to sort ascending by pick sequence. If it isn't sorted this way, allocation won't follow your intended pick order.

Worth the Mention:

Pick Sort and Location Sort control how picking work is displayed to your team. They don't affect allocation. InfoPlus applies them only after allocation is complete. If you're trying to change which inventory gets pulled, that's controlled by your allocation settings, not pick sort.

• Pick Sort Rule lets you sort picks by either location or SKU. If you choose location, the system sorts the pick by your location address by default (i.e. location A-01-003 is picked before B-01-044, C-01 etc.) You can also use a custom field to assign a value to each location and create custom pick patterns. 
• Location Sort works the same way as Pick Sort Rule. You can sort by location address, or by a custom field value you assign to each location.

Configuring Locations for Desired Allocation

Next, we'll look at settings on the Location page: behavior types, priority codes, and location costs.

Location Behavior Types tell InfoPlus what your physical warehouse setup looks like: which locations are forward pick locations, which are pallet racking, which are for case picking, and so on. Each behavior type serves a specific purpose in how orders get allocated and fulfilled. Which location InfoPlus pulls from first depends on your allocation rule. See Configuring Items for Desired Allocation below for how forward locations are weighted.

• Standard is the default behavior type. Use it for locations that don't fit into any other behavior type. It does not prohibit any picking methodology.
• Forward Each & Forward Case are for your easy-to-pick locations. These should contain your "high velocity" items and are typically associated with a Pick Face Assignment to help manage replenishments.
• Pallet is recommended for locations that will always have full pallets. Partial pallet or case picking is not allowed for these locations.
• Case is recommended for locations that will always have cases in them. Each / Inner Pack picking is not allowed for this behavior type. 
• Non-Pickable, LPN, and Holding are the three behavior types excluded from allocation entirely. Inventory in these locations shows as On Hand, but it can't be pulled for an order.
  • Non-Pickable is the recommended option for QC and Damaged locations.
  • LPN stands for "License Plate Number" and is used for temporary purposes. Inventory is temporarily located in an LPN position matching its item receipt ID until is physically located in a put-away location (i.e. receipt ID 157 would be on LPN000157). LPN locations are automatically removed from the system when no longer in use. 
  • Holding is used to segregate inventory that shouldn't be available for fulfillment, such as returns awaiting inspection.

Priority Codes are numeric values that influence how InfoPlus treats a location. The higher the number, the higher the priority. When the same inventory is available in multiple locations, the priority code determines which location gets pulled from.

Location Costs are a recommended alternative to priority codes. You can assign a cost to each location, and InfoPlus always looks for the lowest cost available when choosing where to allocate from. This is useful for hard-to-reach or less desirable locations. Give those locations a high cost, and InfoPlus avoids them whenever possible.

Worth the Mention:

• Custom Fields can also sort allocation. You can create custom pick patterns that make sense for your space and racking setup. We recommend using a sequential number sequence that can be sorted on. 
• Location-level item mixing is controlled with the True/False item mixing field. Setting this to false won't allow more than one item in the location at a time.

Configuring Items for Desired Allocation

This section explains mixing and allocation settings for individual item records. Lot & Item Mixing Rules control how inventory can share a location. Allocation Rules apply to each order line's item settings to determine how inventory gets allocated.  

• Labor Optimized is recommended if you don't need to follow FIFO or FEFO rules. It considers all the settings in this article to determine the best allocation. 
• Weak is useful if your non-forward locations need to follow FIFO or LIFO order. Forward locations can still mix products for labor efficiency. 
• Strict is suggested only when you need the tightest level of control over lot tracking. 

Allocation Field & Sort options tell InfoPlus what fields to use when Weak or Strict allocation is selected. For example, to allocate by expiration date instead of receipt date, set the allocation field to the expiration date and the sort to ascending (oldest to newest). The allocation field options are:

• Distribution Date
• Received Date (FIFO)
• Expiration Date (FEFO) 
• Order Date 
• Prod Lot 
• Product ID Tag
• Revision

Prioritization of Location Behavior Types

Location Behavior Type has its own internal ranking. Under Weak and Labor Optimized allocation, Location Behavior Type is the first field InfoPlus checks. Within that field, forward locations (Forward Each and Forward Case) get priority before Standard, Case, or Pallet locations. Under Strict allocation, Location Behavior Type is only a late tie-breaker, not a first-pass filter, as shown in the table below.

The table below shows how allocation logic is determined, in order, for each allocation rule.

Each item has two mixing rule settings, one for storage locations and one for forward locations. See Lot & Item Mixing Rules for how forward and storage locations are defined, and what each mixing level means. Not every combination is allowed. A forward location's mixing rule can never be stricter than the storage location's mixing rule. The table below shows every allowed combination for each allocation rule.

Worth the Mention:

You can also drive fulfillment off of Product ID Tags by setting up a Product ID Tag scheme. This is useful if you want to allocate and pick orders based on unique product ID values assigned at receipt (typically a unique pallet/drum/barrel/crate etc identifier).