Allocation Basics
To enable Allocation or ask questions about the feature, please email our Support team at support@ordoro.com.
NOTE: This feature is exclusively for our Enterprise customers on Ordoro.
Topics
What is Allocation?
- Allocation determines if there is enough inventory in the assigned warehouse to ship an order. It will check all associated orders with a particular SKU.
- When an order is allocated, inventory is set aside for the order.
- Allocating an item to an order does not adjust your actual inventory. Allocation ensures you properly fulfill orders based on your current physical stock.
Overview of Allocation statuses:
- Unallocated
- The original state of the order. Allocation has not been run on the order.
- Could not allocate
- Allocation has run on the order, but there is not enough inventory for the order.
- Allocated
- Allocation has run on the order, and there is enough inventory to fulfill the order.
- The order is ready to ship.
- Partially Allocated
- Allocation has run on the order, and there is enough inventory for some of the order lines. Other products on the order do not have inventory to allocate.
- Overallocated
- The order was allocated, but since the time of allocation, the physical on hand inventory was reduced.
- The inventory reduction may be because an unallocated order was shipped or the inventory was manually adjusted.
- The products on this order no longer have enough inventory to be allocated.
- It’s best practice to review Overallocated orders to clean them up.
Other notes about Allocation:
- Only orders in the Awaiting Fulfillment status can be allocated.
- When orders are shipped, canceled, or dropshipped, Ordoro will remove the allocation.
- Sorting matters when Allocation is run for multiple orders.
- If you want orders to allocate First In, First Out (FIFO), be sure to sort the orders by Order Date (Oldest).
- Instances when Allocation is automatically removed and should be re-run:
- When a product is added to an allocated order.
- If the ordered quantity is updated on an allocated order.
- When a product’s physical on hand quantity is updated, the allocation status does not automatically update.
- In this case, re-allocate the orders when inventory adjustments are made.
- This is by design so users can control which orders should be allocated.
- The Allocation feature replaces the Standard shippability feature in Ordoro Enterprise accounts.
Using the Allocation feature in Ordoro
- Go to Orders -> Awaiting Fulfillment. Select the orders you want to run Allocation.
- Select Actions -> Allocate.
- Note: In the screenshot below, the orders are sorted by oldest first.
- If you want orders to allocate FIFO, make sure to Sort by Order Date (Oldest).
When Allocation has completed running, the Allocation status is shown per order.
- Orders in the Allocated status are ready to be shipped out.
- Orders in the Could Not Allocate status are not ready to be shipped.
- Orders in the Partially Allocated status can be split to ship items with enough inventory allocated. Or you can keep the order intact, wait for the remaining stock needed, and ship the whole order.
How to fix Overallocated orders
- Overallocated happens when an order was Allocated and then the product’s physical on hand quantity is reduced so it’s less than the ordered amount.
- All open orders with the item will receive the Overallocated status because Ordoro doesn’t know how to allocate the remaining inventory.
- When you see the Overallocated status, you should review your orders and adjust the Allocation accordingly.
- One solution to resolve Overallocated orders is to deallocate the orders and then Allocate again.
Overallocated example:
- An order was placed for the purple tutu.
- In Ordoro, the item’s quantity was one so the full quantity was allocated to the order.
- Another order with the tutu was created in Ordoro and shipped even though it wasn’t allocated.
- This reduced the tutu quantity from one to zero.
- The original order is now Overallocated because there is not enough inventory on hand even though it was originally Allocated.
- Suggested workflow: Once you receive more tutus, search Awaiting Fulfillment orders by the tutu SKU. Then unallocate and reallocate.
Allocation Filtering
Once Allocation has run on orders, you can filter orders by Allocation status in the Orders tab.
1. Go to Orders -> Filters.
2. In the Filters modal, select which Allocation status(es) to filter by.
Automating Allocation
Automation rules can be created to automatically run Allocation on your orders.
The rules can be set up in many ways to meet your business need. For example, a rule can run so only orders from Texas will be allocated. This guarantees all orders shipping to Texas will be allocated first.
Below is an example rule to allocate all orders. Click here for more details on how to set up automation rules in Ordoro.
