You can drag and drop Sales orders (SO) in the Sell screen to change their priority.
Depending on whether you are applying a Make-to-Stock (MTS) or Make-to-Order (MTO) approach, the priority of Sales orders has different effects in Katana.
Read more about Make-to-Stock vs Make-to-Order Manufacturing orders.
The importance of Sales order priority
If applying Make-to-Stock, Sales items availability affects Sales orders
Higher priority Sales orders reserve products in inventory before those with lower priority. This rule only applies to Sales orders that aren't connected to an MTO Manufacturing order.
Example situations:
You create 3 Sales orders, and each requires 3 pcs of the same product. From the Production column, you DO NOT select + Make → + Make to order for any of these Sales orders.
From the Inventory tab in the Stock screen, the product shows 4 pcs under In stock and 3 pcs under Expected. Also, the Committed column shows 9 pcs, which are related to the 3 created Sales orders.
The SO with the highest rank will show Sales items availability as In stock since the quantity (4 pcs) is larger than required by that SO (3 pcs).
The SO below this one shows Sales items availability as Expected despite the In stock quantity being 4 pcs. This is because the SO above already reserved 3 out of the 4 pcs and there is not enough left for the next SO. However, 3 pcs have already been ordered from manufacturing and are expected to be completed in the future.
The SO with the lowest priority of the 3 shows Not available under Sales items availability although In stock quantity is 4 pcs and Expected is 3 pcs. The other two Sales Orders with higher priority have already reserved 6 out of 7 pcs and there is not enough left for this SO. In this case, you should create a Manufacturing Order for this product.
Note: If you change the priority of these Sales orders, the Sales items availability status will also change.
The Make-to-Order approach enables priority management in Make > Schedule
From the Sell screen, if you click on + Make → Make to order under the Production column, a Manufacturing order (MO) for all products required by the SO will be created. This MO will be directly linked to the applicable SO.
The priority of a MO in the Make screen should match with the priority of the linked SO in the Sell screen. The relative position of a MO linked to a SO will change according to the SO priority and vice versa.
Note: The priority of Make-to-Stock Manufacturing orders in the Schedule tab will not be affected by reprioritizing Make-to-Order Manufacturing orders.
Priority affects Ingredients availability status
Materials are committed to orders based on their priority. Ingredients availability takes into account the ingredient requirements (i.e. materials and subassemblies) of both Manufacturing and Sales orders.
If you change the priority of a SO, the Ingredient availability is recalculated for orders based on the updated priority.