Setting Up Automatic Location Assignment

The following steps describe the basic tasks required to configure automatic location assignment in your account.

Flowchart showing basic tasks required to configure automatic location assignment

Step 1: Configure locations

You must configure each location in your account to work with automatic location assignment. Configuring locations involves selecting the most suitable location type, entering the location postal code, and allowing the automatic location assignment engine to assign the location.

To configure a location for automatic location assignment

Go to Setup > Company > Classifications > Locations.
Enter a name for the location.
Select a location type. Later, you will create rules that assign locations to sales order lines based on their location types. You can leave the location type blank (or undefined) if you want, but your rules must take that into account.
Make sure the Make Inventory Available box is checked.
Enter the address details of the location, including the postal code.

Note:
You can also enter the latitude and longitude coordinates of the location.
Click Save, and then edit the location record again to configure specific automatic location assignment settings.
Select the Automatic Location Assignment tab.
Choose a geolocation method. To use postal codes, the location address details must have a postal code. To use lat/long coordinates, make sure you entered valid latitude and longitude coordinates.
In the Automatic Location Assignment field, select Allow Worldwide to allow NetSuite to assign the location automatically to sales orders with shipping addresses anywhere in the world.

If orders are not shipped worldwide from the location, you can allow automatic location assignment on a regional basis. See Configuring Locations for Automatic Location Assignment for more information.
Click Save.

Step 2: Create an automatic location assignment configuration

An automatic location assignment configuration is a collection of rules and backorder rules. You must create at least one configuration with at least one rule in it. If you create multiple rules in a configuration, you can order the list of rules in the configuration – rules at the top of the list are evaluated first. You can create multiple configurations with different rules and then set one of the configurations as the default configuration in your account. In a OneWorld account, you can create multiple configurations per subsidiary. See Automatic Location Assignment Configurations for more information.

To create an automatic location assignment configuration:

Go to Setup > Order Management > Automatic Location Assignment Management > Configurations > New.
Enter a name for the configuration and click Save.
If you have a OneWorld account with more than one subsidiary, select a subsidiary.

Note:
The subsidiary cannot be changed after you save the configuration.
Click Save.

Step 3: Create automatic location assignment rules

An automatic location assignment rule is a combination of settings and options that tells the automatic location assignment engine how to assign fulfillment locations to sales order lines. In each rule, you must specify which line items the rule is valid for, specify valid locations, and choose a fulfillment strategy. See Automatic Location Assignment Rules for more information.

To create an automatic location assignment rule:

Go to Setup > Order Management > Configurations.
Click Edit next to the configuration to which you want to add a rule.
Click the New Rule button.
Enter a name for the rule.
Under Line Items, choose whether the rule is valid for all line items, or whether it is only valid for a selection of items (based on the results of a saved search).

Note:
When you create a saved search, do not specify any Summary Type for search results as it is not supported by ALA.
Under Locations, choose which locations can be assigned to a sales order line. You can limit locations by location type, by a specific set of locations, and by distance (in a radius) to the shipping address.
Under Strategies, choose the strategy to use when assigning locations:
- Minimize Fulfillment Locations attempts to assign as few locations as possible to items in the sales order – it is checked by default.
- The optimal fulfillment strategy determines what method the automatic location assignment engine uses to assign a fulfillment location to a sales order line.
  
  If the Fulfillment Request feature is enabled, an additional strategy called Fulfillment Workload Distribution is available. This lets you distribute orders evenly across locations. Additional configuration is required – see Fulfillment Workload Distribution (FWD).
Click Save.

Step 4: Choose automatic location assignment settings

As well as creating configurations and rules for automatic location assignment, you need to define when automatic location assignment runs. For example, you can configure automatic location assignment to run when a sales order is approved (in response to the Sales Order Approved business event). You can also select a default configuration for sales orders in your company – see About Default Configurations for Automatic Location Assignment for more information.

To set options for automatic location assignment:

Go to Setup > Order Management > Setup Tasks > Advanced Order Management.
On the Automation tab, select the Shipping Orders subtab.
1. Under Automation Processes, select the Automatic Location Assignment option.
2. Under Automatic Location Assignment, choose when you want automatic location assignment to run by selecting at least one event. At a minimum, you should select Sales Order Approved and Payment Hold Released. See Business Events Related to Automatic Location Assignment for an explanation of each event.
On the Automatic Location Assignment tab, under the Configurations subtab, select a default configuration.

In a OneWorld account, select a default configuration for each subsidiary.
Click Save.

Automatic location assignment is now set up and ready to run.

Step 5: Run automation

Run automation for automatic location assignment to start assigning fulfillment locations automatically.

To run automation for automatic location assignment:

Go to Setup > Order Management > Setup Tasks > Advanced Order Management.
On the Automation tab, select the Shipping Orders subtab.
Check the Run Automation box.
Under Automation Process, choose Automatic Location Assignment.

If the Fulfillment Request feature is enabled in your account, you can also choose Both to run automation for both automatic location assignment and fulfillment request creation.
Click Save. The automatic location assignment process starts immediately.

See Running Automation for more information.

Additional Setup Steps

You can configure additional aspects of automatic location assignment to refine how fulfillment locations are assigned automatically.

Create regions

Create regions to define the geographical areas to which your business ships orders. You can then configure automatic location assignment to work with regions in the following ways.
- Allow automatic assignment of a location based on the region in which the shipping address is located.
- Rank locations in a region and then choose to assign fulfillment locations automatically based on the location ranking.
For more information about creating region records, see Configuring Regions for Automatic Location Assignment.
Rank locations in regions

If you want to assign locations in a preferred sequence, such as bigger warehouses before smaller warehouses, you can rank locations in a region. Then, when a sales order has a delivery address in that region, the automatic location assignment engine assigns the top ranked location first – provided other criteria in the rule are met. To rank locations, you must set up regions first. See Configuring Regions for Automatic Location Assignment for more information. Note that a fulfillment location does not need to be physically located in a region to be able to ship to the region.
Verify item attributes

You can change attributes on an item record to modify how NetSuite assigns locations automatically. For example, you can set a preferred location or mark the item as ships individually, in which case the automatic location assignment engine will not attempt to assign a location. See Configuring Items for Automatic Location Assignment for more information.
Customize the sales order form

You can customize a sales order form to show additional fields related to the automatic location assignment feature. The automatic location assignment engine runs as normal regardless of whether the fields are shown or hidden on the form. See Customizing the Sales Order Form for Automatic Location Assignment.
Automate fulfillment request creation

If the Fulfillment Request feature is enabled in your account, you can rerun automatic location assignment on a sales order when a fulfillment request is rejected. Employees at a fulfillment location might reject a fulfillment request for various reasons, for example if there is no inventory or the workload is too high. Rerunning automatic location assignment helps to ensure another fulfillment location is assigned to the sales order. See Rejecting and Canceling Fulfillment Requests.

General Notices