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Checking Availability to Promise (ATP)

Your Siebel Business Application can check with your back-office software to determine the availability of products in a quote or order, so that an end user can confirm availability for a customer. Using this feature, an end user can request delivery by a particular date, inquire about availability, and then reserve the items. An end user can also request that items be shipped from a particular source, such as a warehouse or other inventory location. If customers decide they do not need all of the items, then the end user can also unreserve items from the quote or order.

An end user can specify a requested date and source for the entire quote or order, or for individual line items. The end user can also request that certain items be shipped together, or that all items be shipped together.

Your Siebel Business Application must be set up to make special calls to your back-office application in order to use this functionality. For details, see Integrating Order Management with Third-Party Product Availability Applications.

This task is part of the Common Tasks for Creating Quotes and Sales Orders.

To check availability and reserve items in a quote or order

1. Navigate to the quote or order for which you want to check availability.
2. Click the Shipping view tab.
3. In the Shipping form, enter any requested information that applies for the entire quote or order. The following table shows some of the fields you might want to set.

   Field	Comments
   Requested Date	Enter the date you want the items to be delivered. When entered in the fulfillment form, this date is for the entire quote or order; it is copied onto each line item. Leave this field blank to request the earliest possible date.
   Ship Complete	Check this field to indicate that the order needs to be shipped complete or not at all. All line items are assigned the number one in the Package field.
   Source	Use this field to request that the items in the quote or order be shipped from a particular source. Leave this field blank to indicate that any source is okay. This source is copied to each line item.
   Single Delivery	Select this checkbox to indicate that all line items in the order must be shipped from a single source and have a single delivery date.

4. Click the Fulfillment view tab under the Shipping view, and make any changes to the requested information for individual line items. The following table shows some fields you might want to change.

   Field	Comments
   Qty	Defaults to the quantity of the line item being ordered.
   Requested Date	Leave this field blank to request the earliest possible date.
   Source	Use this field to request that information be shipped from a particular source. Leave this field blank to indicate that any source is okay.

5. To check availability for an individual item, select the line item in the Requested Schedule Lines list below the Fulfillment form, and then click Inquire.

   Your Siebel Business Application checks with your back-office application to determine availability for the line item, and the fulfillment engine returns information to the Promised Schedule Lines list.

6. To reserve individual items, in the Line Items list below the Fulfillment form, select the items and click Reserve.

   Your Siebel Business Application sends a reservation request to your back-office application and the fulfillment engine returns an indication that the items are promised to the Promised Schedule Lines list.

7. To unreserve line items that you have previously reserved, in the Line Items list, select the items and click Unreserve.

NOTE:  You can also reserve items without having previously inquired about them. When a line item is reserved, the requested quantity, date, and source are read-only. If you need to make a change to any of those settings, then you must unreserve the items first.

Splitting Line Items To Accommodate Different Requested Dates

A customer ordering a large quantity of the same item might want to request delivery of part of the order at two or more different times. In this case, the end user can split the line item, assigning quantities and requested dates to each new line. To split a line item, the end user enters two or more records in the Requested Schedule Lines and specifies the quantity and dates for each.

To split a line item across requested dates

1. In the Fulfillment list, select the line item that you want to split.
2. In the Requested Schedule Lines list, click New and enter the requested date and quantity for the first batch.
3. Add another record in the Requested Schedule Lines list for the second batch.
4. Continue to add records until you have the appropriate number of delivery requests. Make sure that the total quantity matches the quantity in the Line Items list.