Automating Consignment Transfers

If you have customers to whom inventory is consigned on a continuing basis, the system allows you to automate the consignment process. Automating the process involves two main steps, which you complete in the following order:

Schedule the Suggested Consignment Auto Transfer utility to regularly check current consignment inventory levels for all customers, or for a specific customer. The system compares current inventory levels to the minimum and maximum inventory levels established for each product currently consigned. The system populates the Consignment Transfer Queue with suggested consignment transfers.
Use the Consignment Transfer Queue to view consignment inventory levels, and to select the customers for which you want to create consignment orders.

Important: The original customer consignment order and the associated system-generated transfer cannot be edited once processed. The system cannot place product quantities back in their original stock locations. Therefore, you must create a return sales order to move the product out of customer consignment locations and back into a stock location or a regular branch transfer to send it back.

Use the Allow Customer Consignment From Multiple Branches control maintenance record to indicate if you want your company to ship consignment inventory from branches other than the customer's home branch. For more information about this control maintenance record, see Consignments Control Maintenance Records.

To schedule the Suggested Auto Transfer utility:

From the Orders > Consignment Inventory menu, select Suggested Consignment Auto Transfer to display the Suggested Consignment Transfer screen.
In the Br/Tr/All field, enter the branch or territory for which you want to run the utility. Enter All if you want to run it for all locations.
In the Customer field, enter the customer for which you want to run the utility. Or, leave this field blank to run the utility for all customers to whom inventory is consigned.

Specify when to run the utility.

If you want to...

Use this hot key...

run the utility immediately

Begin

The utility runs, and its results display in the Consignment Transfer Queue.

schedule the utility to run on a regular basis (the best option for fully automating the process)

Schedule

The Phantom Scheduler screen displays.

To view the Consignment Transfer Queue:

From the Orders > Consignment Inventory menu, select Consignment Transfer Queue to display the Consignment Transfer Queue screen.
In the Br/Tr/ALL field, enter the branch or territory for which to view suggested consignment transfers. Enter All if you want to view the queue for all locations.
In the Customer field, enter a customer for which to view suggested consignment transfers. Or, leave this field blank to view the queue for all customers.

The customers to whom inventory is consigned display.

To view consignment inventory details for a customer, select the Detail hot key to display the Suggested Consignment Transfer Detail screen.

Review the following columns for each consigned product, as needed:

Column	Description
PN	The product ID.
Description	The product description.
Order Qty	The system-suggested order quantity, based on the quantity currently consigned.
Min	The minimum amount that should be consigned, as set up in Customer Maintenance.
Max	The maximum amount that should be consigned, as set up in Customer Maintenance.

Press Esc to return to the Suggested Consignment Transfer Queue screen.
To create a consignment sales order for a customer based on the suggestions displayed in the Suggested Consignment Transfer Detail screen, move the cursor to line for that customer and select the Create hot key.

The system creates a new sales order, with the customer and product information already filled in.

Process this order as usual. Once you complete the order, the Suggested Consignment Transfer Queue screen once again displays.
Repeat steps 7 and 8 until you have created consignment sales orders for all customers in the queue.