How to understand the Assigned Quantity on the Sales Order Line

The assign quantity functionality in Business Central controls how much of an item gets reserved against a sales order line based on the shipment date and what is actually available on that date. When you enter a quantity, Business Central only assigns what can be covered by the date you specify, even if the full quantity becomes available later.

The assigned quantity does not update automatically when you change the shipment date. You have to run the Assign Quantity action manually to recalculate it.

You can decide in the assign quantity setup whether assignments are created automatically or whether you create them yourself. If you turn off automatic assignment, you use the Assign Quantity action on the line or run the reassignment report.

The Assign Flexibility field marks each line as soft assignment so you can filter and reassign across many sales order lines at once, while locking the lines you want to keep.

How assign quantity works on a sales order line

Let’s walk through a concrete scenario. You create a sales line with item number 1000 and a shipment date of 15 February. You enter a quantity of 30, but because of the date, Business Central only assigns one.

If you look at the availability profile, you can see that the item becomes available later on. What the line displays is that on the date and for the quantity you entered, it is only possible to assign one. The quantity available is also only one, and that is why it assigns one.

Automatic versus manual assignment in the setup

In the assign quantity setup, you can set the system to automatically create or calculate the assignment. In the scenario above, that checkmark is on, so the assignment is created automatically.

If you have not checkmarked automatic assignment, nothing is assigned by default. In that case you need to use the Assign Quantity action on the line, or use the report to create the assignment.

The Assign Flexibility field and reassigning many lines

The Assign Flexibility field is a marking field for the user. It lets you filter when you want to reassign across many sales order lines. New assignments are always suggested as soft assignment.

If you use the report to reassign, you can lock the sales order lines you want to maintain and then only reassign the lines marked as soft assignment or the lines that are not yet assigned.

Why the assigned quantity does not update when you change the shipment date

Suppose you find out that the item is available in July and you change the shipment date accordingly. The quantity does not change automatically, because changing the shipment date does not update the assigned quantity on its own.

In this scenario the item is now available. The same situation could apply if supply was created in the meantime through a purchase order, a production order, or another supply order that makes the item available now.

To handle this, there is an action called Assign Quantity that re-performs the calculation. When you run it, it recalculates the assigned quantity and the available quantity, and it resets the assign flexibility back to soft assignment. This lets you manually assign a line whenever you need to.

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