Configuring Regions for Automatic Location Assignment
A region determines a geographical area to which goods can be shipped from one or more fulfillment locations. You use regions when you want to assign fulfillment locations automatically by location ranking. You can define a region according to any of the following criteria:
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Country – The highest level at which you can create a region. NetSuite provides a default list of countries.
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County, state, or province – Counties, states, and provinces are smaller administrative areas in a country. In NetSuite, the counties of some countries are predefined. In countries without a predefined list of counties, states, or provinces, you can create your own list – see Setting Up States, Provinces, and Counties.
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Postal code – The lowest level at which you can create a region. In regions that use numerical postal codes, you can specify a range of postal codes by entering the start and end code of the range. Creating regions based on postal codes might be useful when you deliver to addresses in large population centers or when you have several stores or warehouses that are located relatively close to each other.
To create a region:
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Go to Setup > Company > Regions.
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Enter a name to identify the region.
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In the Region subtab, define the region by adding countries, states, or postal codes to the region detail entry. (Your place of business might use provinces or counties instead of states.) You must add at least one entry.
To create a region at state level or postal code level, first select the country and then specify the state or postal code. To specify a single postal code, enter it in the Zip Code Start field. The same code is copied automatically to the Zip Code End field. To specify a range of postal codes, change the value in the Zip Code End field to the last value in the range.
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Click Save.
After you set up regions, you can configure location records and specify the regions to which each location is allowed to ship goods. See Configuring Locations for Automatic Location Assignment.
To delete a region, go to Setup > Company > Setup Tasks > Regions and click View next to the region you want to delete. In the Actions menu, select Delete. If the region record is associated with other records in the system, such as a location record, you need to dissociate the records first and then delete the region record.
Location Ranking in Regions
Location ranking in a region record lets you specify the order in which locations are assigned to sales orders. It is used when the optimal fulfillment strategy in an automatic location assignment rule is set to location ranking and the shipping address on the sales order is located in the region. Locations that have a higher priority (with a lower rank number) are assigned first.
You can view how locations are ranked in both the region record and the automatic location assignment settings (see Activating Automatic Location Assignment). You manage the regions to which a location can ship by allowing automatic location assignment in the location record - see Configuring Locations for Automatic Location Assignment. All locations that are allowed to be assigned automatically as a fulfillment location can be ranked in the region.
If a location does not appear in the ranking list, check that automatic location assignment is allowed for the region in which you want to specify location ranking. You need to do this in each location record.
For example, you might create two regions in the United States of America for automatic location assignment: USA-West, which includes all states in the western US, and USA-East, which includes all states in the eastern US. You can set up fulfillment locations in both regions and allow locations to ship to a specific region or to ship countrywide to both regions. In the table below, four locations can ship to the USA-West region and three locations can ship to the USA-East region. The St. Louis warehouse can ship to both regions, but it is ranked fourth in the USA-West region to ensure the automatic location assignment engine selects it last.
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Region |
Location |
Rank |
|---|---|---|
|
USA–West |
Warehouse Seattle |
1 |
|
|
Warehouse San Diego |
2 |
|
|
Warehouse Denver |
3 |
|
|
Warehouse St. Louis |
4 |
|
USA–East |
Warehouse Raleigh |
1 |
|
|
Warehouse St. Louis |
2 |
|
|
Warehouse Newark |
3 |
To rank locations in a region:
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Go to Setup > Company > Regions and click Edit next to the region you want to work with.
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Click the Fulfillment Location Priority subtab.
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Drag locations up and down in the list to the desired position.
Locations at the top of the list (with a lower rank number) have higher priority. The first time you assign a rank to any location in the list, all other locations are ranked according to their current position in the list.
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Click Save.