About Back Orders, Partial Shipments, and Inventory

Back orders are generated by the Aptify Order Entry system when the total quantity of products ordered cannot be filled due to insufficient inventory available or when only a partial shipment of the ordered products is desired. Regardless of how or why back orders are created, inventory is tracked much like regular orders.

The original order reserves all the quantities. When the order is completely back ordered or partially shipped, the actual quantity per order line shipped, if any, is moved from the Quantity Reserved field to the Quantity Shipped field. The back ordered quantities remain in the Quantity Reserved field.

Consider this example:

The organization has taken an order for 50 units of Product A and 3 units of Product B. Prior to taking this order, each product started with 500 units On Hand and Available.

Then, 30 of the 50 units ordered of Product A are shipped and 1 of the 3 units ordered of Product B is shipped. When the original order is partially shipped, the inventory levels adjust to account for the shipped items, yet they keep the reserved quantity for the back orders that were created automatically.

As a second example, assume that the inventory available is only 30 units and an order is placed for 50 units. If the Quantity Available is not enough to fill an order, then the order is partially shipped and the inventory levels account for the shipped items, yet keep the reserved quantity for the back order that was created automatically. Note that because there is not enough units available to ship, the Quantity Available field has a negative status when the back order is created.

The inventory behavior for an order with Order Type of Back Order is the same as for a Regular order.

• Back Ordered Status: When a back order is back-ordered, inventory associated with the back order is held in Quantity Reserved.
• Cancelled Status: When a back order is cancelled, the units in the Quantity Reserved are moved back to the Quantity Available.
• Shipped Status: When a back order is shipped, the inventory previously reserved for the back order is moved to Quantity Shipped and Quantity on Hand is also deducted the same amount.