Managing Automation Settings for Automatic Location Assignment
In addition to enabling automatic location assignment (ALA) as a feature, you must choose automation settings, and then run automation. After automation starts to run, NetSuite starts using the automatic location assignment process immediately. All new sales orders created thereafter are processed by ALA according to the chosen automation settings, configurations, and rules.
To manage the automation settings for automatic location assignment, you need to choose the business events that trigger ALA to run, and select an automatic location assignment configuration (known as the default configuration).
In a OneWorld account, you select a default configuration for each subsidiary. If you have only one configuration, you can use it with all subsidiaries. If you have multiple configurations, you can use a different configuration with each subsidiary. If you do not select a configuration for a subsidiary, automatic location assignment will not run on sales orders in that subsidiary.
Automatic location assignment only assigns locations if the sales order is approved and there is no payment hold on the sales order.
With the Fulfillment Request feature enabled, you can run automation for fulfillment requests and location assignment simultaneously. When you run both processes, the Sales Order Approved and Payment Hold Released events you select for automatic location assignment are also used for fulfillment request creation. On the Advanced Order Management Setup page, under Fulfillment Request Creation, the Sales Order Approved and Payment Hold Released boxes appear as read only. For example, if you check the Sales Order Approved box, NetSuite automatically assigns locations when you approve a sales order and then creates the fulfillment requests.
To manage automation settings for automatic location assignment:
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Go to Setup > Order Management > Setup Tasks > Advanced Order Management.
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Click the Automation tab and then click the Shipping Orders subtab.
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Under Automation Process, select Automatic Location Assignment.
If the Fulfillment Request feature is enabled and you also want to use automation for fulfillment requests, select Both. See Fulfillment Request Creation for more information about automating fulfillment requests.
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Under Automatic Location Assignment, choose when you want the process to run. Each option under Automatic Location Assignment corresponds to a business event in NetSuite. You must select at least one event. If no events are selected, the automatic location assignment process will not be triggered and NetSuite will be unable to assign locations automatically.
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Sales order approved
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Payment hold released
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Sales order changed
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Item fulfillment changed
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Fulfillment request rejected
Note:The Fulfillment Request Rejected option only appears when the Fulfillment Request feature is enabled.
For more information about these business events, see Business Events.
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Click the Automatic Location Assignment subtab.
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In the Default Configuration field, select a configuration.
In a OneWorld account, you can select a configuration per subsidiary. To turn off automatic location assignment for a particular subsidiary, select Not Defined in the Configuration dropdown list. Automatic location assignment continues to work for all other subsidiaries that have a configuration selected.
Note:Default configurations can be overridden on a sales order in several ways, for example, when you specifically select another automatic location assignment configuration on the sales order form. See About Default Configurations for Automatic Location Assignment.
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To view how locations are ranked in regions, click the Region/Location Mapping subtab. You can change the ranking order by editing a region record – see Location Ranking in Regions.
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Click Save.
After you save the automation settings, you must run automation in your account by checking the Run Automation box. See Running Automation for more information.
You can also use a macro to run automatic location assignment. See Automatic Location Assignment Macro for more information about the macro.
About Default Configurations for Automatic Location Assignment
A default configuration is the automatic location assignment configuration (ALA configuration) that NetSuite sets on a sales order when you open a sales order form. You can specify one configuration as the default for all sales orders. If you have a OneWorld account with multiple subsidiaries, you can specify one default configuration per subsidiary. If you do not specify a default configuration for a subsidiary, the Automatic Location Assignment Configuration field on the sales order appears blank. Because the field is blank, NetSuite does not assign locations automatically for sales orders in that subsidiary.
To set a default configuration, go to Setup > Order Management > Setup Tasks > Advanced Order Management, click the Automatic Location Assignment tab and select a configuration as the default.
On a custom sales order form, the Automatic Location Assignment Configuration field can be shown or hidden. Even if the field is hidden on the sales order form, NetSuite will still take the default configuration into account and assign locations automatically according to the rules in the configuration.
As well as setting a default configuration for sales orders, you can set the automatic location assignment configuration on a sales order in other ways, each of which differs in how and when the field is set. You can do one or more of the following to set a configuration:
Setting the ALA configuration in any of the following ways always overrides the default configuration.
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Select manually – You can manually select an automatic location assignment configuration on the sales order. Provided that the field is shown on the sales order form, you can select any available configuration for the subsidiary.
Note:If the field is hidden on the sales order form, you cannot change the automatic location assignment configuration manually. You can change the automatic location assignment configuration on the sales order with a workflow (SuiteFlow) or with a script (SuiteScript).
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Use SuiteFlow – You can create a workflow that sets the automatic location assignment configuration field on the sales order based on triggers and conditions. For example, you can create a workflow to set a configuration when the sales order form is loaded. If a default configuration exists for the subsidiary, the workflow overrides it. See SuiteFlow (Workflow) for more information about workflows.
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Use SuiteScript – Scripts can set the automatic location assignment configuration field on a sales order. For example, you might write a script that sets a different automatic location assignment configuration if the number of lines in the order exceeds 100. If a default configuration exists for the subsidiary, the script overrides it. See SuiteScript for more information about how to work with scripting in NetSuite.
Scripts are often run when a record is saved, meaning the configuration shown on the sales order might not be the same as the actual configuration used by the automatic location assignment process. To view the actual configuration used, reopen the sales order record and verify the Automatic Location Assignment Configuration field.