Allocation allows you (as a pantry warehouse) to remove inventory from your warehouse and mark it as being used for a different pantry system. The allocation page can be used to see all orders that are still awaiting allocation. Orders that have been completely allocation or “Marked as Completed” can be viewed from the Distribution page. The Allocation page looks as follows:

Ordered Between - When Filtering, this will filter to only orders placed by other pantries where the date the order was placed falls within the “Ordered Between” date range filter.

Pantry Name - This will list all pantries entered into “Pantries” under the Maintenance button. This will allow you to filter to open orders for the pantry selected.

Order # - If there is a specific order you’d like to view, you can use this option to filter to that particular order.

Search - Allows you to query for open orders based on the filtering parameters supplied.

Place Order - Allows you to create and place a new order for a pantry. For more details, see Place Order.

Within the grid containing open orders, we have:

Pantry Name  The name of the pantry who placed the order.

Order # - The number assigned to the order after it was created.

Ordered - The date/time that the order was entered.

Count - The number of distinct items on the order.

Delivery - The date requested to be the Requested Delivery on the order.

Completed - The date the order was either completely allocated or marked as completed.

Open - Allows you to view and edit allocations made to the order.

Print - Opens a new tab and allows you to print details on what’s been ordered/what’s been allocated.

Reject - Allows you to dismiss an order so that items can’t be allocated. Note that if an order has been partially allocated, the order cannot be rejected.

To place an order for a pantry, click the “Place Order” button. Select the pantry that the inventory items are going to and enter a requested delivery date.

Once a requested delivery date has been entered, the grid displayed on the “Shopping List” tab will display all food items available. You can either leave the “Category” and “Item” filters blank to display all food items or select the category/item to filter to a specific item.

The “Requested” column represents the number of a particular item that a pantry would like to receive. Additionally, you can specify the unit of measure that the pantry will be receiving the item in using the “Req UOM” column. Entering a non-zero number into that column will cause it to be added to the “Cart”. You can switch to the “Cart” tab to view all items currently on order for the pantry. “Item” represents the number of distinct items on order and “Quantity” represents the total quantity of items requested across all items on the order.

Once you’ve added all items that the pantry would like to receive, you can click “Submit Order Request” to add that order to the Allocation grid. Order submission, if a “Notify Of Order Acceptance” email has been set on the pantry profile, that person will receive an email notifying them that their order has been submitted.

To allocate inventory to an open order, filter down to the order that you’d like to allocate to and click the “Open” button.

Doing so will display a dialog that looks like so:

Warehouse  Determines the warehouse location that the inventory will be taken from.

Order # - The distinct number assigned to the order by the system.

Prior Allocations  If the order is still open, but there have been allocations  (partial allocations) made to order items in the past, you can use this drop-down to view what allocations were made to the order previously. The drop-down will list allocations based on the date the allocation was made.

Requested Delivery  This is the “Requested Delivery Date” that was captured when the order was initially created and cannot be changed.

Scheduled Delivery  This is the date that the item is expected to arrive at the receiving pantry.

Within the grid, we have:

[Main Header]

Category - Food items grouped by category within the grid and displayed in order of the name of the item being requested.

Item - The item being requested.

UOM - The requested Unit of Measure for the item.

Requested - The number of that particular item that’s been requested.

Approved - The number of that particular item that has been approved by the warehouse pantry.

[Sub Header]

Wh - The Warehouse that the item will be taken from (Can be changed using the Warehouse drop-down in the top right of the dialog).

Item - Again, the item being requested.

Best By - If a best by date was entered for the item when it was received into inventory, it will display here.

UOM - The unit of measure that is currently available in inventory for the item.

Avail - The number of that particular item currently in the selected Warehouse Location.

Approved - The number of the item that can be currently allocated to that order. If you enter a number less than the requested number, the order will be left open when you click save unless you choose to “Mark Order Complete”. Doing so will cause the current allocation to appear in the Prior Allocations drop-down.

Clicking the “Auto Allocate” button will allocate inventory to the order automatically based on what is currently available in inventory. If a best by date is applicable for the item, items with a "best by" date that is earlier will be used first.

Once you’ve finished allocating inventory to the item, you can click “Save”. If all the requested inventory has been allocated to or if you click “Mark Order Complete” when saving, the order will move to the “Distribution” page. If the order has only been partially allocated, the inventory allocated will be sent to the distribution page and any inventory that has not been completely allocated will remain on the Allocation page until allocation to the order has been completed or the order is marked as completed.