Order Handling in Zenventory: Allocate Bigger and Better

Zenventory has made some big upgrades to our order handling engine, particularly within the stock allocation process.

Some businesses have a very high volume of orders to fulfill, and this means that the mission-critical allocation (order handling) process can sometimes be taxing on the system. Luckily, Zenventory has added more muscle to our queries behind this function to take on even the most intense amount of inbound orders hitting the system concurrently.

So what is the allocate page on Zenventory? On the main menu, under Orders, you will see Allocate displayed right between New Order and Pick. When you are processing a customer order, the first step is to allocate the stock. This will identify and reserve specific items from your inventory to use for fulfillment of that particular order.

In your system settings, you can opt for the Auto Allocate process to have the system automatically choose stock for all waiting orders from stock on hand, wherever sufficient stock is available. The benefit for your picking crew with Auto-Allocate is that items stored in more than one location will automatically be selected by Zenventory’s intelligent location selection, to minimize “zigzagging” and also ensure that older stock is cycled out more quickly than newer stock.

Prefer more control? You can also allocate orders manually and choose specific locations to allocate stock from. To proceed with manual allocation, click on the Allocate Items for this Order button to the left of an order. A list of warehouses that contain the requested item will be displayed. You can check one or more of these warehouses to fulfill the order form. With at least one warehouse checked, click the button labeled Click to Allocate from Selected Location(s). If there is more than one sub-location where the items is stored within the warehouse, you will be asked to enter the quantity that you would like to allocate from this location. Select the green check mark when you’re done to complete the allocation process. You may then proceed onto Order Picking.

To learn more about the Allocation functions in Zenventory and more, visit our Help Site at help.zenventory.com.