If you are selling products that have batch tracking enabled, a batch must be assigned to the Sales items on a Sales order (SO).
You can only select batches from stock at the "Ship from" Location of the SO.
Depending on whether you are Making to Order or taking sales items from existing stock (Make to Stock or Purchasing products), Katana will ask you to select items from specific batches or assign batches automatically.
For sales orders that are imported from e-commerce (e.g. Shopify, WooCommerce) and fulfilled from the e-commerce side (in case you enabled sales order fulfillment status sync), Katana automatically assigns a batch number to sales items using the FIFO (first in first out) method. See more details below.
Selecting items from batches when Making to Stock or Purchasing products
When taking items from the existing stock (not Making to Order), you must select sales items from batches manually.
You can select batches for sales order line items when you mark the SO delivery status as "Packed" or "Delivered". You cannot select batches for line items on a SO that is Not delivered.
The same workflow applies when changing the Delivery status for Sales orders in bulk directly from the Sell screen.
Selecting batches for Sales items:
Change the Delivery status for the SO to Packed or Delivered.
Select batches for all items that have batch tracking enabled.
Select a batch and define the quantity to be taken from the batch for each item. You must select batches for the total quantity of the item. You can only choose batches from the "Ship from" Location of the SO.
Quantity to assign column displays the quantity of items for which a batch has not yet been selected. You cannot "Confirm" the completion of the SO before the Quantity to assign is zero for all items on the list.
In the Batch # column, you can select items from existing batches with a positive stock quantity.
You can also select items from the "Unbatched" batch if there are positive or negative quantities for the item in "Unbatched" batch.
- Quantity to track column is the quantity of items you are taking from the batch selected in the Batch # column. By default, the quantity to track is filled with the maximum quantity of items available in the selected batch or with the total quantity required to assign in the respective column. You can edit the quantity to track manually if needed.
If you do not select the entire quantity from a single batch, an additional row will be added to the table which allows you to choose the remaining quantity from another batch.
When batches are selected for all items, you can "Confirm" the selection.
You can edit batches for both Packed and Done Sales orders.
Assigning batch numbers when Making to Order
If you are making sales items to order (using the Make to order button to create an MO for the item), the batch number will be assigned to Sales Items automatically.
As Make-to-Order products are directly related to an underlying SO, the SO always takes items from the related MO (Make-to-Order) automatically. This cannot be changed.
If the related Make-to-Order MO hasn't been completed (the Sales Items are still in an Expected status), you can define the batch number for the batch directly from the SO. This will automatically complete the related MO.
However, if you are also tracking batches for ingredients used on the related MO, be aware that ingredients will be automatically taken from the "unbatched" batch in this case. You should then go to the related MO (Make screen > Schedule tab > Done table) and select batches for the ingredients. As you can edit the batch info for ingredients on a completed MO, you do not need to revert the MO.
Auto-assigning batch numbers when order fulfillment is initiated from the e-commerce side
Katana will auto-assign batches to batch trackable items on Sales orders when fulfillment is initiated from the e-commerce side (e.g. Shopify, WooCommerce).
Batches will be automatically assigned to the sales items on your SO using the FIFO (first in first out) method. This is how the assigning works:
First, any quantities from the "Unbatched" batch are used (until there is 0 quantity in "Unbatched").
Then, batches are assigned based on the Expiry date (the oldest first). Already Expired Batches are not used for auto-assigning.
If there are no batches with Expiry dates (or no quantities left), batches are assigned based on the Created date (the oldest first).
When there is not enough stock left in any existing batches, Katana will start assigning items from the "Unbatched" batch as a fallback, which will result in negative stock. To avoid this situation, we recommend always keeping sales items in stock (that are not expired).
Similar auto-assigning rules will be used for your batch trackable materials and sub-assemblies when your Sales order is linked to a Make-To-Order (MTO) MO. In this case, the MTO is marked "Done" automatically when the SO is fulfilled, and batches to ingredients are assigned automatically.