manual allocation of available inventory

[Former Member]

Gurus,

Would like your help.

I'm not a SAP user yet but our sister division is, having recently implemented SAP.

We are a manufacturing organization with a make-to-stock customer service policy. Customer orders are received by us which are then transmitted to a 3PL that maintains our inventory and fulfills the sales orders.

On occasion, due to a variety of reasons, our inventory gets too low to fulfil all customer orders immediately. In such situations, customer service works with the customer to fulfill the immediate requirement with the expectation of fulfilling the rest when additional stock becomes available.

For example, a customer calls for 100 units but upon further discussion is willing to accept 50 now and wait for the remaining 50 at a later date. In such situations, customer service enters the order for 50 units in SAP and maintains the other 50 in a spreadsheet, outside of the system.

The argument for doing so is that it is a way to guarantee that, with minimal effort, only the quantity that needs to be shipped is transmitted to the 3PL. The problem with this is, as is probably obvious, (a) it appears that our service to customers is better than it really is (b) it messes up the demand history and therefore the forecasts and hence increases the likelihood of perpetuating the problem.

With our relative unfamiliarity with SAP, unable to figure out a better way of executing this process within the system. But as it is a fairly common issue, was hoping to get advice from the community on best practice.