The NetSuite Fulfillment Request

NetSuite for Administrators

The NetSuite Fulfillment Request feature allows you to generate a Fulfillment Request record from sales orders and send them to specific store locations. Let’s take a quick look at how you would set up and use this NetSuite feature.

NetSuite Fulfillment Request Overview

In your company’s order fulfillment workflow, the fulfillment request fits between the sales order and the item fulfillment. When an order comes in, you can create either one or multiple fulfillment requests for the items on that order. If you have the Store Pickup feature enabled, then you can set things up for orders to be fulfilled either by shipping the order directly to the customer or having the customer pick up the order in the store.
Fulfillment requests are needed when stores will be fulfilling orders rather than a warehouse. When you submit a fulfillment request to a store, you are asking that store to fulfill the order. Stores have the ability to acknowledge and fulfill an order they receive via fulfillment request. They can also reject or cancel the fulfillment request.

NetSuite Fulfillment Request Setup

Let’s take a look at how you would set up fulfillment requests in NetSuite.

Enable the Feature

First, make sure the Fulfillment Request feature has been enabled. You can do that on the Shipping and Receiving section of the Transactions tab in Enable Features. Four features are prerequisites of the Fulfillment Request feature, including Locations, Multi-Location Inventory, Advanced Shipping, and Pick, Pack, and Ship. These features are required in order for you to use Fulfillment Request.
NetSuite features shipping and receiving

Set Location Preferences

By default, fulfillment requests can be sent to any locations that are the “Store” type. To change this or to add a new location type, navigate to the Advanced Order Management Setup (Setup > Order Management > Advanced Order Management) and go to the Fulfillment Requests tab.
Location Fulfillment Requests by Location Type
Of course, setting your location preferences only works if your location records have the correct location type listed. To double-check that your location records have the right type listed, pull up your location records at Setup > Company > Classifications > Locations.

Using NetSuite Fulfillment Requests

Creating a NetSuite Fulfillment Request

Creating fulfillment requests begins on the sales order. Navigate to the list of sales orders and select Edit next to the sales order you wish to create a fulfillment request for. At the top of the sales order, you will see the Request Fulfillment button. Remember that you must have an appropriate location listed on either the header of the sales order or on the individual line items.
Request Fulfillment Button on Sales Order

This will take you to the Fulfillment Request – To Be Generated page. Here, you will review the request, select the necessary items, and generate the Fulfillment Request record. The status of the request is set to New by default. The status should be changed to In Progress once the store has acknowledged and accepted the request.

Fulfillment Request To Be Generated

In the Items subtab, enter the quantity for the item you are requesting. Then, make sure the Fulfill checkbox next to the item has been selected. When you’re done, save the record.

Fulfill Checkbox When Generating Fulfillment Request
If your sales order has different locations listed for each line item, you will need to create multiple fulfillment requests, at least one for each location represented. To do that, you would just return to the sales order and use the Request Fulfillment button as many times as you need to.

Receiving a NetSuite Fulfillment Request

Once a fulfillment request has been processed, how would the store acknowledge and accept the request? To acknowledge a fulfillment request, the store must change the status of the request from New to In Progress. Additionally, if the store can only fulfill a portion of the order, then the line items that are not being fulfilled would be simply left unchecked.

To start, navigate to Transactions > Order Management > Manage Fulfillment Requests. This will take you to the list of fulfillment requests. Use the Filters region to set the Fulfillment Location filter to your store and the Status filter to New. Then, from the filtered list of results, select View next to a fulfillment request.

Fulfillment Requests List

On the Fulfillment Request record, review the order and select the Mark in Progress button in the header to accept this request. You can also cancel the request if your store is unable to fulfill the order.

Fulfillment Request Record
If you can fulfill part of an order with multiple line items but not the entire order, go into Edit mode on the Fulfillment Request record and select the exact line items you wish to fulfill. Then, save the record.

Fulfilling a NetSuite Fulfillment Request

Fulfilling a fulfillment request will look different depending on whether you are shipping the order to the customer or simply preparing the order for the customer to pick up directly at your location.

For a store pickup fulfillment, you will need to use the Fulfillment Request feature in conjunction with the Store Pickup feature. Using this feature requires configuring your locations for store pickup, creating sales orders that are intended for store pickup, and establishing your store pickup workflow. In another blog, we will break down this process.

The other option is to ship the order to the customer, which is the process described in this article. After you save a Fulfillment Request record, an Item Fulfillment record is generated and the order is funneled into the Pick, Pack, and Ship process.

Conclusion

Fulfillment requests allow you to have more flexibility in how you fulfill items while providing essential communication throughout the entire process. If this is a feature you would like to begin using in your account or if you have any other NetSuite needs, SuiteRep would love to come on board and help. Contact us to get the conversation started.