Consignment Orders
The company maintains separate storage locations in the system for each consignment warehouse. These storage locations store the customer number and ship-to address information. It's important to note that the goods stored in the consignment warehouse remain the property of the company until they are removed/used by the customer.
To replenish the consignment stock, the company uses normal sales orders but with a specific consignment order type. The consignment storage location is also included in the sales order header. It's essential to define these consignment storage locations in advance containing the customer ID and optionally a specific ship-to address.
The shipping process for consignment orders is similar to regular sales orders. However, during the sales shipment posting, a stock transfer to the consignment warehouse takes place, and the sales line is directly marked as completely shipped. Once the customer removes the goods from the consignment location and the used quantities are reported back, the used goods can be booked out of the consignment warehouse by creating/posting a normal sales invoice. This can be done by:
- directly posting an invoice from the consignment order,
- but also using the standard "Get Shipment Lines" function on a newly created sales invoice or,
- using the combine shipments invoice batch job.
In summary, here are the steps of the consignment process:
- Set up consignment storage locations per customer/customer delivery address.
- Add the consignment storage location in the order header.
- Follow the normal shipping process but use the consignment order type.
- Upon shipment posting, the stock is transferred to the consignment stock.
- Invoicing is performed through the regular invoicing process, where stock is being consumed from consignment location upon posting the invoice.