Why Is My Inventory Different From What's Available?

Promising Allocates Supply, but Inventory Doesn’t See the Change

Promising returns the supply that's available to promise. This supply can include inventory that's currently on hand in inventory. It also includes supply that Promising can get from a purchase order, work order, or transfer. Assume there's no supply on hand in inventory today, but Promising finds 5 purchase orders, each with a quantity of 20, and with an expected delivery date of today. You'll see a quantity of 0 in the Inventory Management work area, but Promising will tell you a quantity of 100 is available.

Promising returns all the supply that's available on a particular day. Assume Promising finds five different purchase orders. Each purchase order is scheduled to deliver a quantity of 20 on each day for the next 5 days. If you ask Promising to get availability on day:

1, Promising will tell you 20 are available.
2, Promising will tell you 40 are available.
3, Promising will tell you 60 are available.
4, Promising will tell you 80 are available.
5, Promising will tell you 100 are available.

But if Inventory has a quantity of 0 on any of these days, then the Inventory Management work area tells you there's no on hand inventory.

Promising decreases the supply that it promises, but Inventory won't see the decrease until Promising actually reserves supply. Assume:

You have a quantity of 100 in on hand supply on Monday.
On Wednesday there's a purchase order with a quantity of 20.
You create a sales order with a quantity of 90 on Monday and Promising promises it to arrive on time but doesn't reserve supply.
You create another sales order with a quantity of 20 on Thursday.
Promising promises it to arrive on time but doesn't reserve supply.
You create a third sales order on Friday with a quantity of 20.

Promising only sees that 10 are available:

100 on hand minus 90 for the first sales order equals 10.
10 plus 20 from the purchase order equals 30.
30 minus 20 from the second sales order equals 10.

You might see a quantity of 100 for Item Availability in the Inventory Management work area because Promising didn't reserve supply for the sales orders.

Quick Availability and Check Availability Return Different Results

Promising returns availability in two different ways.

Quick Availability	Check Availability
Includes only the supply that's currently available at one location.	Includes supply that's available and potentially available at one location, including creating supply by buying it, making it, or transferring it. Assume you have a sales order with a quantity of 120, and you have these quantities in your supply chain. 10 that's on hand in Warehouse x 10 that you can buy through a purchase order 100 that you can transfer from Warehouse y Inventory Management will display 10 for Quick Availability because that's all there is that's on hand. But Check Availability will say it can promise the entire quantity on time.

Quick Availability

Check Availability

Includes only the supply that's currently available at one location.

Includes supply that's available and potentially available at one location, including creating supply by buying it, making it, or transferring it.

Assume you have a sales order with a quantity of 120, and you have these quantities in your supply chain.

10 that's on hand in Warehouse x
10 that you can buy through a purchase order
100 that you can transfer from Warehouse y

Inventory Management will display 10 for Quick Availability because that's all there is that's on hand.

But Check Availability will say it can promise the entire quantity on time.

Canceled

Assume you cancel your Friday order, which has a quantity of 20. Promising can see that this quantity is no longer pegged to the order, so it increases the supply that's available, but Inventory might not see this change.

Scheduled but Not Shipped

Promising might schedule your order but order fulfillment might not set the status to Shipped.

Assume Promising and Inventory both see a quantity of 100, and Promising schedules a new order with a quantity of 10. Promising reduces its supply to 90 (100 minus 10). If fulfillment doesn't ship the order, then Inventory doesn't see the change, and will continue to show 100.

You must collect the sales order when you ship it to keep Promising and Inventory synchronized. Promising considers supply according to how you set up past due supply and past due demand on your ATP rule. Assume you set past due demand to 5 days but don't set past due supply. You have an order with a quantity of 10 that Promising scheduled on day minus 3. If fulfillment hasn't shipped the order, then Promising considers the demand as new demand, and allocates supply for the order again.

Or assume you set past due supply days to 5 but don't set past due demand. You have supply for a quantity of 10 on day minus 3, and restart the promising server. Promising might reallocate this supply to a different order.

Supply Chain Orchestration

Assume Promising finds that there's no on hand supply in Inventory. Promising instead identifies supply that's available through a transfer and sends a pegging type of ATP to Supply Chain Orchestration, but Orchestration can't tell whether Promising is looking at on hand inventory or future supply, such as through buy, make, or transfer. Orchestration tries to create a reservation in Inventory but it fails because there isn't any on hand supply. You must manually resolve this problem only after on hand supply is available.

For example, assume:

You submit a sales order in a back-to-back flow on day 1, with a requested date on day 30 for a quantity of 10.
Promising schedules the order, and identifies that there's a purchase order that will provide supply of 20 on day 28 in the warehouse.
Promising sends an ATP recommendation to Orchestration, but there isn't any on-hand supply on day 1.
Orchestration creates the supply order, starts the reservation, but the reservation request fails because there isn't any on hand supply.

Review Supply Availability

The Set Up Your Items in Product Information Management page has a snapshot of supply that Promising can currently see. Promising uses this snapshot to identify what supply is available to meet demand, but the snapshot doesn't have details about supply in Inventory. To fix this problem, you must regularly collect data.

Remedies

Collect

You can avoid each of the problems described above. To keep quantities synchronized between Promising and Inventory Management, you must periodically collect data so Promising and Inventory are viewing the same data in your supply chain. For details, see Collect Data for Global Order Promising.

Examine Your ATP Rule

Promising returns availability only if the rule's mode is Supply Chain Search. So, if you need availability, use Supply Chain Search.
Promising adds availability from each source that you specify. Examine the sources that you've specified and make sure Inventory can see the same supply.
If you enable the Search Components and Resources option, then Promising considers the supply that's available for the configured item.
If you set the Past-Due Demand Considered in Days attribute, then you should also set the Past-Due Supply Considered in Days attribute, and set them to a low number, such as 30 or less.

For details, see ATP Rules.