Role guide: warehouse operator

This guide is for the person on the warehouse floor: your xMatix day is physical stock and the documents that move it. You receive the morning's deliveries, reserve and pick stock for the day's orders, send delivery orders out of the gate, count shelves so the system stays honest, and release or receive transfers between branches. Every one of those steps posts to the inventory ledger, so the buttons you press are the stock figures everyone else reads.

Overview

A warehouse day in xMatix follows four document chains:

Two rules run through all of it:

• The flow is lean. Goods are received straight into the storage location named on each receipt line, so there is no separate putaway document. Dispatch goes straight from picked lines to a delivery order, so there is no packing document.
• Corrections are new entries, never edits. Cancel Allocation and Cancel Picking write negative lines, and a count difference becomes an adjustment. The ledger keeps the whole history.

Where you work

The Warehouse app is a web app. As shipped, its menu holds:

Each entry shows only if your profile grants it (see Permissions). The Inventory app carries Fulfilment Orders, Transfers, Cycle Counts and Adjustments too, with the Inventory Stock and Inventory Ledger pages, so you may be working there instead. Goods receipts live in the Procurement app, because they are released from purchase orders.

An entity that is not on any of your apps can still be opened from the App Launcher: below the apps, All Entities lists every entity you can read.

The All Fulfillments list is the natural landing page. Each row is one fulfilment released from a sales or service order. Partner Account and Branch say whose stock moves from where, Account says for whom, and the header's Pending Allocation Quantity, Pending Picking Quantity and Pending Delivery Quantity say how far it has gone. Do not create a fulfilment by hand to force stock out when the source order cannot be found.

Your path

Read these in order. Each one is the full procedure; this guide doesn't repeat them.

1. xMatix Warehouse: the product overview, and where Warehouse ends and Inventory begins.
2. Storage locations and vans: the map of your warehouse, and the vehicle attributes that make a location a van.
3. Receiving into the warehouse: storage locations on the receipt, counting, Receive and inspection.
4. Fulfilment picking: allocate, pick, confirm, release the delivery, and undo in the right order.
5. Delivery orders and dispatch: the delivery checklist, transport details and posting.
6. Cycle counting: scope a count, lock the stock, record quantities, release the variance.
7. Branch transfers: the warehouse view: outward release, in transit and inward receive.
8. The inventory ledger: why every action leaves a posted entry, and how to read the balance.
9. Troubleshooting warehouse operations: the refusals you will meet, in their own words.

Prerequisites

Before your first day, your administrator must have:

• Given you a profile that opens the apps you work in and grants the warehouse actions you are trusted with. No shipped profile other than System Admin has both the Warehouse app and the picking, dispatch and counting actions; see Permissions.
• Created the storage locations of your branch, so receipts and transfers have somewhere to put stock.
• Set up the items you handle with their inventory settings (Track Inventory, Track Lots, Inspection On Receipt) and, for lot-tracked items, their lot types.
• For the delivery checklist, created a checklist template of type Delivery (see Warehouse configuration).

Procedure

Step 1 — Receive the morning's deliveries

Open Procurement → Goods Receipts and find the receipt the buyer released for the delivery. Set the Storage Location on each line, enter Supplier Quantity from the delivery note and the quantity you received, then run Receive. Receiving puts the stock into the location on each line. Items that need inspection stay out of available stock once you run Inspection, until Inspection Complete. If the location is left empty, the stock is received with no location. See Receiving into the warehouse.

Step 2 — Reserve stock for the day's orders

Open Warehouse → Fulfilment Orders, open a fulfilment and run Allocation. xMatix reserves stock of the fulfilment's partner account and branch, oldest lot first, skipping lots on hold, and adds a row to Allocation Line for each lot or stock record it used. Anything it could not find stays in Pending Allocation Quantity: allocation never fails for lack of stock. Use Selective Allocation to reserve only some lines or part of a quantity.

Step 3 — Pick and confirm

Run Picking. Each allocation line becomes a picking line that tells you what to take, from which location and how much, and the quantity moves from Allocation to Picked in the ledger straight away. Take the goods, then run Confirm Picking. If you found less than requested, confirm, deliver what you have with Selective Picked Delivery, then run Selective Cancel Picking for the missing quantity. See Fulfilment picking.

Step 4 — Release and post the delivery order

Run Picked Delivery on the fulfilment. It refuses while any picking line is unconfirmed. If your warehouse does not record picks, skip Step 3 and run Allocation Delivery instead. Open the new delivery order from the fulfilment's Delivery Order grid, check the lines, fill in the transport details, and run Post Inventory. That posts the outward movement and releases the stock the lines held. Print DO prints the delivery note for the driver. See Delivery orders and dispatch.

Step 5 — Count today's shelves

Open Warehouse → Cycle Counts, check Pending Cycle Counts and Cycle Counting In Progress first, then create or open the count. Tick Lock Inventory if the counted stock must not move while you count, and run Start Counting. Record every line, including lines where you found exactly the book figure: a line left at 0 is written off. Run Finish Counting, then (or your supervisor) Release For Adjustment. See Cycle counting.

Step 6 — Release or receive transfers

At the source, open the transfer under Warehouse → Transfers and run Release Outward, or Selective Release Outward for one truckload. The stock leaves your bins and travels in transit. At the destination, open the inward transfer, choose the Storage Location on each line, record any damage, run Inward Recieve (or Selective Inward Receive) for what arrived, then Post Inventory. See Branch transfers.

Step 7 — Close the day

Filter All Fulfillments by branch and look for documents with pending picking or delivery quantity. Check that transfers released to your branch have been received and posted, because unreceived stock stays in transit. If a figure surprises you, open the item in Inventory → Inventory Ledger before you change anything.

Example

An operator at a regional depot of a garden-tools distributor works Tuesday.

1. At 08:00 a truck brings 200 hose reels. The goods receipt shows 200 on the line. They set Storage Location to Aisle B-02 and enter Supplier Quantity 200. Four reels are crushed, so they enter Received Quantity 200 (damaged units included) and Damaged Quantity 4, then run Receive.
2. At 10:00 they open a fulfilment for 60 hose reels and 30 sprinklers and run Allocation. The sprinklers allocate only 24, so 6 stay in Pending Allocation Quantity.
3. They run Picking, pick both items, and run Confirm Picking. All 24 sprinklers are found, but only 58 reels, so they run Selective Picked Delivery for 58 reels and 24 sprinklers, then Selective Cancel Picking for the 2 missing reels.
4. On the new delivery order they enter the vehicle number, run Post Inventory and Print DO, and the van leaves.
5. At 15:00 their count of the sprinklers in Aisle C-05 finds 46 where the line's On Hand Quantity says 48. They record 46, run Finish Counting, and their supervisor runs Release For Adjustment, which drafts an adjustment of −2 for the supervisor to post.

Training

Practice exercise

In a sandbox, with a profile that has the Warehouse app and the warehouse actions (System Admin is enough for practice), and an item with stock at a test branch:

1. Release a sales order for 5 units of the item to a fulfilment.
2. Open the fulfilment from Fulfilment Orders and run Allocation.
3. Run Picking.
4. Run Picked Delivery before confirming.
5. Run Confirm Picking, then Picked Delivery again.
6. On the new delivery order, run Post Inventory.

Expected result: after step 2 the fulfilment has an allocation line for 5 and the item's available stock drops by 5. Step 3 adds a picking line. Step 4 is refused with Cannot create delivery for Picking Lines that are not confirmed. Step 5 creates a delivery order with one line for 5. After step 6 the item ledger shows an Outward movement of 5.

Quick reference

• Receive into the storage location on each receipt line: set it before Receive.
• Allocation never fails for lack of stock; read Pending Allocation Quantity.
• Picking moves stock to Picked at once; Confirm Picking records that you took it.
• Picked Delivery needs every picking line confirmed; after a cancel, use the selective form.
• Undo in reverse order: cancel picking first, then allocation.
• A delivery order changes stock only when it is posted.
• Record every count line, even an exact one: a line at 0 is written off.
• A released transfer sits in transit until the destination receives and posts it.

Permissions

Warehouse work needs three kinds of access on a security profile:

1. The apps and pages. The Warehouse app needs an app grant, and its Settings entry is a page with its own page grant. Goods receipts are in the Procurement app; the Inventory app also carries fulfilments, transfers and counts.
2. The records. Read, create, edit and delete on Inventory Fulfilment and its order, allocation and picking lines, Delivery Order, Transfer, Cycle Count, Goods Receipt and their lines, plus read on Items, Branches and Storage Locations.
3. The actions. Every button above is an action granted on the profile's Actions tab. A user with record access but without the action doesn't see its button, and running it another way is refused with The current user is not allowed to execute server action …. This is how you let an operator pick without releasing the variance of a count.

What the shipped profiles give a warehouse operator:

All four broad profiles have full record access to the warehouse documents and their lines, and to storage locations. So a Standard User or Sales Manager can do the work but reaches it through the Inventory app, the Procurement app, or All Entities. Delivery Orders is on no shipped app except Warehouse, so without the Warehouse app it is opened from a fulfilment's Delivery Order grid or from All Entities.

If a menu entry or button is missing, start with A user can't see something.

Configuration

This section is for the administrator setting up an operator.

Set up a warehouse operator

1. Clone Standard User on Setup → Access control → Profiles: it already has the warehouse records and actions. See Build a profile for a role.
2. On App Permissions, add the Warehouse app. Under App Page Permissions, add Settings only if the operator maintains storage locations and lot types.
3. On Entity Permissions, keep the warehouse documents and their lines, and read on Items, Branches and Storage Locations. Remove what the role must not touch.
4. On the Actions tab, take away what this person shouldn't do. For example, keep Start Counting and Finish Counting but remove Release For Adjustment so a supervisor approves count differences, or remove the delivery order's Post General Ledger when finance posts.
5. Invite the user with the profile, and remove Standard User from them, because access is additive.

Settings that shape the warehouse day

Common problems

I can't find the Warehouse app

Your profile doesn't grant it. As shipped, only System Admin and Sales Executive have it. Standard User and Sales Manager find fulfilments, transfers and counts in the Inventory app instead. Ask your administrator for the app grant.

The Picking or Picked Delivery button is missing

Your profile lacks the action. Sales Executive can allocate and confirm but not pick, deliver from picks, count or transfer. Ask your administrator to add the actions to your profile's Actions tab.

I can't find Create Invoice or Release Shipment on the delivery order

They are not in the shipped delivery order header, even for users who are granted them. An administrator adds them to the record layout. See Delivery orders and dispatch.

"No pending picking quantities found in fulfillment allocation lines to create picking."

Nothing on the fulfilment is allocated and waiting to be picked. Run Allocation first, and check Pending Allocation Quantity for lines with no eligible stock. See Fulfilment picking.

"Item is locked for transaction! Please contact your Administrator for more details."

A cycle count with Lock Inventory is counting that stock. Wait until the count is finished, or ask whoever runs it to finish counting. See Cycle counting.

Transferred stock has vanished from both branches

It is in transit: the source released it and the destination hasn't received and posted the inward transfer. Receive and post it at the destination. See Branch transfers.

Common questions

The system says we have stock I can't find. What now?

Trace it first, then correct it. Open the item in Inventory → Inventory Ledger: every movement behind the number is listed, so you can see whether it is a receipt into the wrong location, an unposted delivery or a transfer still in transit. If the shelf is right and the system wrong, a targeted cycle count releases the difference as an adjustment, or your supervisor raises an adjustment directly. Don't receive or transfer stock "to make it match". Troubleshooting inventory walks through the method.

Do I need a separate putaway or packing step?

No. xMatix receives goods straight into the storage location on each receipt line, so choosing the location on the line is the putaway. Outbound, the picking lines record what was taken and from where, and the delivery order is built from them, so there is no packing document in between. If you need to record packing checks, your administrator can set up a delivery checklist template, which Populate Checklist copies onto the delivery order.

Does creating a delivery order reduce stock?

Not on its own. The stock it carries is already reserved or picked, so it is not available to other orders, but it leaves the branch's books only when the delivery order is posted with Post Inventory. Post as the vehicle leaves, so the ledger matches what is physically gone. See Delivery orders and dispatch.

Can I do warehouse work on the mobile app?

Not in the Warehouse app: it is web only. The Inventory app is part of the shipped mobile app for the profiles your administrator assigns to it. For receiving, picking, dispatch and counting, use the web.

Related topics

• Role guides: every role guide and how to build a profile for a role.
• xMatix Inventory: the stock ledger and rules underneath every warehouse document.
• Transferring stock between branches: the transfer document end to end.
• Picking and fulfilment: the sales-order side of what you pick.
• Receive goods against a purchase order: the full goods receipt.
• Item lots and lot types: when stock is tracked lot by lot.
• Warehouse configuration reference: locations, lot types, numbering, checklist templates and the van capacity check.