Soft Reservations in Inventory Allocation

Prevent Double-Booking

When an IT fulfiller approves a hardware request, the fulfiller selects Reserve Any Asset for a chosen location. Soft reservations immediately decrement a location's available inventory count between the initial request and physical fulfillment. This update prevents other fulfillers from double-booking remaining stock before you pick the physical asset.

Note A system can show more assets than the actual available quantity. The Reserve Any Asset option creates a soft reservation. This reservation decreases available inventory counts to prevent double-booking without allocating a specific physical asset. To reserve a distinct, individually identified asset immediately, select Reserve Specific Asset instead.

Soft Reservation Lifecycle

The soft reservation lifecycle follows these stages:

1. Sourcing: Open a service request and review available inventory across stockroom locations.
2. Soft Reservation: Select Reserve Any Asset for a specific location to trigger a soft reservation instead of selecting a specific serialized asset.
3. Inventory Update: The system increments Quantity Soft Reserved on the related product item and decrements Quantity Available.
4. Conversion: Link a specific physical asset to the fulfillment order line item to consume the soft reservation. The asset status updates to Reserved, transitioning the inventory to a hard allocation.

Quantity Available Formula

For asset-based inventory locations, the system evaluates underlying data to determine the net inventory available for new requests:

Quantity Available = Quantity On Hand - (Quantity Soft Reserved + Quantity Allocated + Quantity Damaged + Quantity On Hold)

Administrative Constraints

To maintain data integrity and a reliable audit trail, soft reservation fields are subject to specific system constraints:

• Read-Only Fields: For asset-based locations, quantity tracking fields, including Quantity Soft Reserved, derive automatically from underlying asset records or fulfillment orders. These fields are read-only to prevent manual inventory inaccuracies.
• Full Allocation: The system doesn’t support partial allocation for a single order line item. If a location lacks inventory for the entire requested quantity, the system returns an error.
• Automated Reversion: If you cancel a service request before pickup, the system triggers a deallocation. This process restores the available quantity to the general pool without affecting physical on-hand counts.