Why Assure does not support certain workflows?

What kind of features we take and prioritize in the roadmap.

In software, hundreds of features can be built. That said the cost of development and maintenance of software also increases. Thus our software license fees to our client's will also increase, which is not a good thing for the ecosystem.

In order to keep the software license fees low and provide maximum value to our clients, we always try to take only critical features which

1. Increase our client's sales
2. Tremendously optimize client's operational efficiency.
3. Many customers have asked for i.e. it is an ecosystem level requirement.

Why Pigeon hole aisle allocation is random, without logic?

If you are operating at a low scale, then this problem does not matter. If you are operating at a large scale, then items for different orders will be randomly arriving at different times. So different pigeon-holes will be getting completed at different times. So anyway after a while, pigeon holes will be available randomly only.

Reprinting of item-ids, if vanished or lost.

• Please use a high-grade label to print and stick item-ids.
• If you know / can find out the item ID no., then it can be printed. Please ask our customer support team to enable this feature for you.
• If the item ID number is lost (i.e. you do not know about it), then there cannot be done anything about it. The best you can do is to re-GRN it into the system. This will increase the inventory count in the system, but you can find the lost item IDs during the cycle count.

No dashboard for order status - fulfillable/unfulfillable/processing/pending, gate entry etc.

Different customers have different requirements/expectations out of dashboards. Hence we are unable to create a standard dashboard for the same.

Why item-ids are printed for extra/excess items during GRN?

• In Assure, any counting of items (for GRN, picking, packing, etc.) are item-id based for correctness. So printing of item ID is mandatory.
• We are building a feature, where you can store extra items in the warehouse. This storage will again be item-id based

Cycle count (Need item details i.e. client SKU, article, size) to match with physical product

Cycle count feature is for counting the products, location-wise. Cycle count is not for doing product QC or for ensuring that the right labels are pasted on the right products. You must ensure the correctness of such things in the GRN phase itself.

Capture date of delivery to end-consumers?

Assure is intended to be purely a WMS system. Such features are beyond the scope of a WMS

Edit returns images to mark the area of product damage.

This is a very sophisticated feature with not much value. 

Please see What kind of features you take in the roadmap

Inventory management of packing material.

While some customers have asked for this feature, it is hard to do so in Assure because Assure is item ID based. It makes no sense to print item-ids on packing materials. The best is to use another tool like Zoho inventory to manage such inventories. 

Please see What kind of features you take in the roadmap

Suggest packing material on the packing screen

This feature needs complex data requirements and algorithms. Also, this problem can be 99% solved via training. So there is not much RoI on building this feature. 

Please see What kind of features you take in the roadmap

Picking based on Ageing

Assure automatically creates picklists based on FIFO. FIFO is calculated based on the date of creation of  Item ID

Printing of Proof of Delivery document for returns inventory

Not many customers have asked for this

Please see What kind of features you take in the roadmap

Exposing inventory of other warehouse but processing via Assure

To increase sales, clients will want to expose inventory from other warehouses (like a mother warehouse) where Assure is not running. So they end up using some hack to put more inventory on their website etc. Such orders flow into Assure and become unfulfillable. Then the client gets inventory from the mother warehouse and performs a GRN and then do the picking and packing of such orders.

We strongly do not recommend this. This is a hack and should not be done. 

It is counter-intuitive to use a system (like Assure) to ensure inventory accuracy and order fulfillment accuracy, and then bypass it for more sales. Instead, you must use:

• A proper WMS for your mother warehouse (or you can use Assure WMS2)
• A proper OMS in between to split and route orders

Picking consumer return inventory by QC-Fail Reason

Often you would want to pick inventory by QC fail reasons. This could be for Return excess / QC fail items back to the vendor

We do want to create such a feature, but various customers have varied opinions on how this should be done.  

We are still exploring a perfect way to do this 

For now, there is a workaround that exists.

• Segregate inventory based on return QC reason into different bins
• Get a report for such bins. 
• Put these SKUs in a stock transfer order then pick
• Then use the pick-by-item-id feature to pick only those items from those bins

Picking inventory for RTV (Return to Vendor)

This can be done using a workaround similar to Picking consumer return inventory

• Store excess/qc-fail items for different invoices in different bins
• Get a report for such bins. 
• Put these SKUs in a return order then pick
• Then use the pick-by-item-id feature to pick only those items from those bins

Support for different MRPs for same SKU

You may want to relaunch products with a different MRP and hence want to maintain items of different MRPs (old and new) in the system. Unfortunately this is a very complex feature to develop. Here are the complexities involved

• How does the marketplaces communicate the MRP to WMS ?
• What happens if MRP is not updated on the markeplace cataloging and an incorrect MRP comes into the system
• What happens to picking efficiency, if in the same bin there are items of different MRPs
• What happens if you changed the MRP but didnt relable the existing inventory.
• Even many marketplaces do not allow different MRPs for same EANs. So how to handled end-to-end workflows in that case

Note that any system works on the concept of a unique identifier for a product. In our case it is the EAN. Ultimately, every transaction boils down to  allocation, picking, packing and dispatch of EANs. 

So the recommended process is to create new EANs for new MRPs

Capturing marketplace Line Item No for returns

Some marketplace give this, some don't. Some give multiple level information like Bag No, AWB No, Line Item No etc. It is hard to capture so many details in an abstract architecture. Also, such information in reports results in very large database table joins, which makes the system innefficient.  Then when there are multiple items of the same SKU, then attributing a return to a Line Item No becomes hard. Hence this feature is not p