Product documentation
Confirm realistic ship dates: in trade and wholesale, it is key to be transparant to your customers about expected and confirmed ship dates. If the availability of a product depends on a purchase order, it is better to await the vendor's answer before confirming a ship date to the customer.
In many cases it is both the wish of the customer and the wholesaler to ship orders in full on time (aka. DIFOT or OTIF).
"On time" is often measured against the confirmed ship date or confirmed receipt date. In general, these dates should not be confirmed yet if they are only based on assumptions about an fixed purchase lead time, without knowing the answer of the vendor. "In full", i.e. the last available sales line determines the ship date of the whole order.
Promised not available: any disturbances that result in a later receipt should be communicated as soon as possible once there is no reasonable alternative to keep the promised confirmed dates.
Promised sooner available: when a receipt is expected earlier, maybe the goods can be shipped to the customer earlier than the already confirmed ship date. However, one should be careful not to overpromise with the risk of recalling the good news again. Therefor wait until the goods are actually physically on hand in the warehouse.
Delivery Confirmation supports these requirements by adding new powerful overview screens and automatic mass-update functions to standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations .
Standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations comes with out of the box ATP functionality. When a sales order line is entered, the ATP function plots the available inventory per day, up to the end of the ATP time fence.
In short, ATP defines the current inventory, immediately subtracts all stock that is already promised within ATP time fence.
Expected stock receipts are added to the projected stock on the expected receipt date, with a horizon equal to the ATP time fence.
The date at which ATP finds enough available stock, is returned to the sales order line as requested ship date, and if applicable this date is postponed automatically according to ship calendars, transport calendars and receipt calendars.
If ATP does not find enough stock within the ATP time fence, the requested ship date is postponed to ATP time fence + 1, and if applicable this date is postponed automatically according to ship calendars, transport calendars and receipt calendars.
The ATP functionality is also available from the sales order header through the button Calculate delivery dates. This function allows to move the confirmed ship dates of all lines in the sales order to the latest calculated date.
Within the standard delivery date control types, in general, ATP gives the most reliable results, if:
Challenges exist because ATP:
Once the requested sales line ship dates are set through ATP, the Master planning should handle the supply chain. Master planning (both classic and optimized planning service) can provide an overview of delayed sales order lines.
Challenges exist because Master planning:
Delivery Confirmation solves these challenges by adding new functionality and aligning all steps in the following process:
Main steps
Italics: automatic batch job or manually.
Sales and markering > Sales orders
If a fixed ship date is agreed with the customer, e.g. because the customer hired a crane or installation experts, switch on the flag Freeze shipment dates on the sales header. The ship date will not be moved to an earlier or later date automatically. The intercompany scenario is supported too.
The flag Reconfirm sales order is inherited from the customer to the sales order, and can be used to setup an automatic re-confirmation batch for orders with changed confirmation dates.
Master planning > Run > Update allocation
Immediately after each Master planning run, the Update allocation (for the same master plan) should run in batch.
The logic travels through the master planning transactions from vendor via production and transfer orders to the customer, and updates the allocation type on each transaction.
This allocation type can have different values, ranging from least certain to most certain. The bold printed allocation types are certain enough to confirm a ship date to the customer.
The Planned PO and PO pending confirmation are considered as not certain, and therefor if the sales order directly or indirectly is allocated with supply like planned PO or PO pending confirmation, the sales order ship dates should not be confirmed to the customer. So if we produce a car and the sub-sub-BOM of this car contains a dust cap on the wheel that has no confirmed PO date, we cannot confirm the car yet.
On the vendor, it is possible to specify: Vendor ships without confirmation. In this case after firming the planned PO, the allocation status becomes Confirmed PO line. Even if there is no real confirmation, this PO line is treated as confirmed.
Sales and marketing > Sales orders > Order confirmation > Sales delays
In this form, the upper grid displays the sales orders that need either a first confirmation or a re-confirmation after a change in the supply chain. The lower grid displays the sales order lines for the selected sales order.
The allocation type of the order is equal to the least certain allocation type of the lines.
Button [Process entire order]
If the allocation type of the order is not Planned PO and not PO pending confirmation: the confirmed ship dates for the whole order are moved to the latest ship date on any of its lines. The receipt calendar is taken into account. The receipt margin is applied.
NB: if one or more shipment lines (= load lines) already exist, it is still possible to process the entire order, but if the shipment consolidation policy is per address instead of per order, it may be necessary to split the shipment later in the process.
Sales lines for which no sales confirmation exists yet, get confirmation action "Confirmation". Sales lines for which a sales confirmation already exists, and the new confirmed date differs from the previously confirmed date, get confirmation action "Changed".
Button [Process delayed lines]
If the allocation type of the order line is not Planned PO and not PO pending confirmation: the confirmed ship date of each line is set according to the Master planning's calculation, incl. delays. The receipt calendar is taken into account. The receipt margin is applied.
Sales lines for which no sales confirmation exists yet, get confirmation action "Confirmation". Sales lines for which a sales confirmation already exists, and the new confirmed date differs from the previously confirmed date, get confirmation action "Changed".
Filter [blank]
All sales orders that contain one or more lines which should be confirmed or reconfirmed are displayed.
Filter [Promised not available]
All sales orders that contain one or more sales lines that have been confirmed on a sales confirmation, and for which the Master planning calculates a delay, are visible in the promised not available list.
Use button Process entire order or Process delayed lines to update the confirmed dates and the confirmation action Changed automatically.
Filter [Promised sooner available]
All sales orders that contain one or more sales lines that have been confirmed on a sales confirmation, and are now allocated against on hand, are visible in the promised sooner available list.
Use button Process entire order to update the confirmed dates and the confirmation action Changed automatically.
Note that the new ship date will never be earlier than the requested ship date on the sales header (= earliest ship date).
Be aware that not all customers are interested in receiving the goods earlier than confirmed, because they might also have anticipated on the later ship date.
Master planning > Run > Process delays
This function can run in batch and will update the confirmed dates either per order line, or will shift the dates of the whole sales order to the latest ship date. If Freeze shiment dates is set on the sales order or the original sales order, the date will only be confirmed when the requested ship date is feasible. The receipt margin is applied.
Sales and marketing > Sales orders > Confirm sales order
Setup a batch job that includes all sales lines where confirmation action = Confirmation. When the confirmation is posted and printed, the confirmation action will be blanked automatically.
Sales and marketing > Sales orders > Confirm sales order
Setup a batch job that includes all sales lines where confirmation action = Changed and sales order header Reconfirm sales order = Yes. When the updated confirmation is posted and printed, the confirmation action will be blanked automatically.
This is standard functionality: when the receipt margin is 3 days, Master planning calculates back: the receipt should be 3 days earlier than needed for the issue.
But if the receipt date is postponed by 3 days, the issue date can be the same day as the receipt date without any delay.
Note that this behavior applies to receipt margin, whereas issue margin is never consumed.
If the commercial company purchases at the logistical company the Master planning and Update allocation should run in both companies.
If receipt calendars are used, the calendars must be set identically in both companies on the address.
First in the logistical company:
Then in the commercial company:
Sales and marketing > Sales orders > Tab Sell >> Group Actions > Align confirmed date
On sales orders where all open sales lines have a confirmed ship date, copy the last confirmed ship and receipt dates to the header.
This function is also executed when Process entire order is used on the Sales order delays screen
Note
Sales and marketing > Setup > Delivery confirmation > Confirmation dead lines
If the allocation for a sales order is fully covered by on hand stock, the ship date could be set to today.
However, the warehouse operations need also some time to pick, pack and ship the goods. Therefor it is possible (not mandatory) to set a dead line per weekday until which it is allowed to set the new ship date to today. E.g. after 16:00 we should not make new commitments to ship more goods today.
| Field | Description | Remark |
| Monday .. Sunday | Time of day | After this time of day, when the process entire order or process delayed line is executed, and the stock is physically allocated, the new ship date will not be today but be shifted to the next open calendar day. |
Sales and marketing > Periodic tasks > Automatic time fence reservation
In standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations , the typical moments to reserve physical inventory for a sales order are upon:
Theoretically it is still possible to use the ancient form "Release sales order picking", but this is only suitable for low volume operations, and relies on human interaction.
In many scenarios, the moment of physical reservation should depend on the purchase order lead time (or the production lead time). The ideal moment of reservation is often somewhere between order entry and release to warehouse.
If it is no longer possible to purchase (or produce) the item within the remaining time until the committed ship date, it makes sense to reserve the physical stock.
But if there is still time enough to purchase additional stock in the remaining time until the committed ship date, it would not be smart to physically reserve the stock. We do not want to fail when reserving any new orders that must be shipped within the lead time.
Delivery Confirmation allows to automatically reserve the sales orders that must be shipped within the purchase lead time (or production lead time), if there is inventory available for reservation.
This process can run in batch, e.g. every night, or a few times per day.
The logic only takes into account sales lines for which there is at least one "On order" inventory transaction. Direct delivery lines are skipped automatically.
In the dialog it is possible to refine the filter on ranges of sales order lines, sales orders, items, customers etc.
Sales and marketing > Periodic tasks > Set order complete
The time fence reservation can be triggered automatically together with the set order complete batch, when Accounts receivable > Setup AR parameters > tab Sales order optimizer > group Order complete > Time fence reservation = Yes.
Instead of the Automatic time fence reservation in batch, it is also possible to start the time fence reservation for an individual sales order:
Sales and marketing > Sales orders > All sales orders > ribbon tab Sell > button group Actions > button Time fence reservation
Sales and marketing > Sales orders > All sales orders > Completion (when Accounts receivable > Setup AR parameters > tab Sales order optimizer > group Order complete > Time fence reservation = Yes)