Using Retail Allocations in D365

Overview

Allocations and pre-allocations are common business processes in the retail industry for moving product currently in the distribution center (DC) or on the way to the DC. When retailers have many stores and items to allocate, allocations can be exhausting to enter manually, so it is important for a purchasing staff to be able to create them efficiently.

Steps

• To create a new allocation for inventory already in the DC, navigate Retail > Supply chain > Allocation

• • Select New

• Enter a description, the buyer group, and “From warehouse”. If the Ship date is at future date, enter the ship date as well.

• Many retail companies will have reports with item quantity in a matrix with the stores, looking similar to the image below:

• With this in mind, RSM developed an import with a data format that can be easily created from a report with data in a format similar to the example. The report can use excel to apply calculations, and the format can be adjusted quickly to the format below:

• Size and color are included in the template for retailers dealing with soft goods. The format is also simple enough the import can be created from scratch. Using power of excel, data can also be created for many products across many stores very efficiently by applying formulas to reports the business is already using.
• After the data is in the format above, it can be imported using the Import from Excel button.

• The lines will be added to the allocation and the user will be able to review the quantity going to all warehouses.

• The user can then select the confirm button. The confirm button will generate transfer orders to the stores for the desired quantities. The inventory on the transfers will automatically be reserved.
• Products can also be added to the purchase order allocation by selecting the Add Products button, which will allow the user to add products by department, vendor, or individually.
• The quantity available to be allocated will be notated by the available physical quantity, and the user will be notified if they attempt to allocate more quantity than is available. If an item can only be transferred in a specific quantity (example: multiples of 6), the transfer multiple will be honored as well.

• The same process can be applied to confirmed purchase orders before they are received. Simply select the confirmed purchase order, and on the Retail fast tab, select Purchase order allocation.

• A new purchase order allocation will be created with all lines from the PO added to the allocation. The user simply needs to define the quantity to be distributed to each store.
• The quantity can be defined manually, or using the same excel import used on the allocation import.

• After the quantities are defined, the user can select “Confirm”. Transfer orders will be created with reservations against the inbound PO quantity.

Learn More

Want to learn more? Visit academy.rsmus.com for eLearning courses and information about our hosted training classes in Denver! Or contact our Microsoft Dynamics experts at RSM (855) 437-7201.

Curtis McDonald