Assign Products to Warehouses to be split into separate delivery orders automatically

[jeffreysgrossman]

It would be nice if you could set up a relationship with a warehouse and a product in such a way that allows the system to automatically split the delivery orders to be filled in certain warehouses automatically based on the established relationship.

The system now allows you to create the delivery orders from the sales orders by using the create delivery button on the sales order. It has the logic to take any deleted products from the created delivery order slide out screen, store them. When you create a new delivery order using the create delivery button on the bottom, it creates it with the deleted products from the first delivery order added to it. This seems to fit nicely into that existing logic. Being able to configure it so that product A is stocked and manufactured in Warehouse A. Product B is stocked and manufactured in Warehouse B. Set the relationship on Product A to Warehouse A, Set the relationship on Product B to Warehouse B. Every time the button for create delivery order is hit. Split the products into two different delivery orders based on the associated warehouse to product relationship. If all products are from only one warehouse relationship or there are no relationships established, the functionality would remain the same as it is today.

I am trying to figure out how this can be done using the workflows based on a status on the sales order. I think the functionality exists for that? However, it would be a useful feature to see it also work natively when creating delivery orders. As mentioned earlier the system would still allow you to shift the products to a different warehouse if need be, after using the create delivery order button. It would just allow for the system to be that much more user friendly and put up that one extra layer of guardrails when creating delivery orders.

Thank you,

[yuri]

As I understand, it's a sort of a default/preferred warehouse for a product. Right?

We'd need to research on this topic. Maybe different solutions of this problem exist (how other ERPs handle this).

[yuri]

One may also need pre-selecting warehouses based on a customer or its location. Just having the relationship between product and warehouse may be not the best solution if we would like to address other use-cases in the future.

[jeffreysgrossman]

Hello yuri can I just say thank you for the way you think. Further down my backlog is to eventually develop out a way to have a menu that only allows the purchase of certain products based on the relationship of the customer and the geolocation distance from their address to the warehouse address. We happen to have situations where we have both situations at the same time. A total of 4 warehouses in 1 state. Two warehouses in the north and two in the south. Both North and South warehouses have dedicated products they make in each type of warehouse. So product A is only manufactured and available in Warehouse North A and Warehouse South A While Product B is available only in Warehouse B South and Warehouse B North.

I have been thinking about the problem from the menu side of things more than the fulfillment side of things. However after I had submitted the request I was also thinking about the fact that I need to start figuring out the north vs south problem (the geolocation issue) as well as the Dedicated Licensing Per Warehouse Type forcing multiple warehouses to produce only certain types of products.

I will still suggest that the software be able to handle each of these situations and the combination of all of them. The product to warehouse default/preferred alignment I feel is still part of the equation to make Espo very flexible for all situations. It is an alignment that would work very well for a lot of businesses that have the dedicated warehouse type model.

I would also suggest that the geolocation option for fulfillment work separately as a configuration in the back end. So that you can turn on warehouse geolocation fulfillment and allow the system to automatically create and split delivery orders based on a distance calculation of the customer shipping address. Then with both options you would be able to achieve the dedication split of Product A to warehouse North A for this sales order and Product B to warehouse B South for this order.

Using the sales order customer shipping address as the geolocation assignment when turned on in the back end admin allows the creation of delivery orders to work hand in hand with the suggestion of building the product warehouse preferred/default relationship. Especially in this case where you allow for more than one relationship to Warehouses.

So basically three modes:

- Preferred / Default Warehouse only: Allows the relationship of a product to a warehouse and is used when creating delivery orders to split based on that relationship
- Geolocation Only: Turn on back end switch to have the geolocation automatic warehouse assignment create the delivery order assigned to the closest warehouse. No preferred/default associations are made by the user. They exist but if not established they will not be used.
- Both working in Tandem: Turn on the back end geolocation and make associations of products to dedicated warehouses. This would need to allow for alignment to more than one warehouse to a single product. In this case the splits happen between Warehouse A and B still but the geolocation does it between Warehouse A North and Warehouse B North because the alignment to warehouses was established for Product A to Warehouse A North and Warehouse A South.. That is used as well as the geolocation to determine if it should create delivery order to Warehouse A and B north or South.

This is the real world situation that we are facing ourselves and would love to get your smart brains thinking about the best way to have Espo handle them all.

I very much appreciate you taking time to engage with me on this at least to get you thinking about what "could" be the best solution.

As stated every time. The system is so awesome! I am just so happy to we working on it. I love to see things get better and better so anything I can do to help figure out all the best ways to build for all the situations people have I am in!

I realize there are no guarantees this will ever get done. Just really appreciate the ability to voice what i think will work well and hope others might agree.

Thank You!!!

[yuri]

Thank you,

Maybe we could consider having a custom formula script that determines the warehouse a particular product assigned to. This script will run dynamically per each product whenever a Delivery creation is initiated. This would allow to have rules of any complexity with support of custom relationships and fields.

The similar concept we already use for price rules.

[jeffreysgrossman]

Again yuri love the way you are thinking. Very much appreciate this and you taking time to consider this.

Here is my offical vote yes on this!

lol.. Happy Friday.. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. If you want any info from me please just ask. I will keep trying to detail out the real world situations we are facing and trying to overcome with this awesome tool.