Picking and packing in SAP Business One: Pick and Pack, pick lists and the delivery

What Pick and Pack does in B1.

Pick and Pack is under Inventory → Pick and Pack. Its main window is known as the Pick and Pack Manager; the current SAP Business One 10.0 help calls it the Pick Pack and Production Manager, because production orders go through it too. It works on open sales orders, A/R reserve invoices, production orders and inventory transfer requests. Sales orders for a lead don't appear.

The window has three drawers, which together show where every order stands:

• Open: order rows that are not on a pick list yet. The selection criteria decide which warehouses, dates and customers you see; the sort order decides who gets the stock first when there isn't enough.
• Released: pick lists that have been made but not picked yet.
• Picked: pick lists that are fully or partly picked but not yet delivered.

Picking itself changes no stock and posts nothing. A pick list is a work list with a status. Stock goes down, and the journal entry is made, only when the delivery or the A/R invoice is added.

From sales order to delivery, step by step.

• The sales order is entered as usual. On its Logistics tab, Allow Partial Delivery decides whether the order may leave in parts, and Pick and Pack Remarks carries instructions to the pick list.
• In the selection criteria, choose Status Open, the warehouses and a Sort by, for example by delivery date. In the Open drawer, check the rows and the To Release quantity, then choose Release to Pick List.
• The pick list appears in the Released drawer. Print it, or open it in the Pick List window (Inventory → Pick and Pack → Pick List) and fill in the picker.
• The picker picks and records the quantities in the Picked column: on paper and typed in afterwards, or directly on screen.
• From the pick list or the Picked drawer, choose Create: Manual Delivery opens the deliveries for you to check, Automatic Delivery adds them straight away, Manual A/R Invoice invoices without a delivery.

B1 puts rows with the same customer, ship-to address and payment terms on one delivery. A pick list with three customers therefore gives three deliveries. You can also choose Create from the Open drawer, but then no pick list is made at all.

Pick lists in detail.

A pick list has a status that B1 keeps up to date: Released, Partially Picked, Picked, Partially Delivered and Closed. Per row it shows Ordered, Released, Picked and Open to Pick. Pick All fills in the picked quantity for every row, limited to what is available. Handy, but it records what was released, not what someone actually took off the shelf.

• Bins. With bin locations, B1 allocates bins to the pick list, automatically or by hand. When you release, the Pick List Generation Wizard opens and can split pick lists by warehouse, warehouse sublevel or bin attribute, so two pickers can each take one zone.
• Batches and serial numbers. You can allocate them at release, change them on the pick list, or leave them for the moment of picking. If Document Settings allows pick lists with an empty bin location, bin, batch and serial are left empty when the list is made and filled in before picking.
• Several orders on one list. A pick list can hold rows from many orders and customers. That is the closest B1 gets to batch picking: one list, one walk, and a delivery per customer at the end.

Partial picks.

Being short on stock is normal, and B1 handles it in two places. On the business partner, the Payment Terms tab has Allow Partial Delivery of Sales Order and Allow Partial Delivery per Row, which set the default for new orders; on each sales order, the Allow Partial Delivery checkbox decides. With partial delivery allowed, you release what is available, deliver what was picked, and later release the rest to a new pick list. Without it, the order has to go out complete.

The Avail. to Release column helps: stock minus what is already released, picked or about to be released. Choose the Sort by in the selection criteria with care, because it decides which orders get the scarce stock.

Packing: packages on the delivery.

Packing in B1 is recorded on the delivery, an A/R invoice or an A/R invoice + payment, not on the pick list. Open the document and choose Go To → Packing Slip. In the Packing Slip window you create packages, choose a package type, and move items with their quantities from Available Items to Package Contents. B1 calculates the weight from the item master data if it is filled in. Package types are set up under Administration → Setup → Inventory → Package Types. You can print the packing slips together with the delivery or on their own.

What B1 doesn't do.

• No wave picking. B1 has no waves: no automatic grouping of orders by route, carrier or cut-off time, and no pick-then-sort step. The closest is several orders on one pick list.
• No check on what was picked. The Picked column holds whatever someone types. On paper or screen, nobody checks that the right item, batch or bin was taken.
• No stock movement at picking. Picked goods stay in their bin in B1 until the delivery is added. If you stage goods at a dock, that is a separate inventory transfer.
• No warehouse tasks. No replenishment tasks, no picker performance, no packing station. That is WMS territory; see the guide on scanning without a WMS.

Before you start.

• Decide per customer whether partial delivery is allowed, and set it on the business partner so new orders inherit it.
• Choose a Sort by that matches how your warehouse really works, so scarce stock goes to the right orders.
• With bin locations: check default bins and how bins are allocated, so pick lists point to where the goods really are.
• Package types with their weight, and item weights in the item master data, if you want weights on the packing slip.
• Agree who releases pick lists and who creates the deliveries, and how often. A list left in the Picked drawer means goods that left the shelf but are still in stock in B1.
• Barcodes for items, boxes and bins are set up in B1, if you pick with scanners.

How KoonScan does it.

KoonScan picks the pick lists you release in B1. The employee scans the pick list or the sales order number and walks the lines in order of bin code, with the allocated bin shown as Pick from. Scanning the item adds one. Before anything is posted, KoonScan checks the item, the bin, the batch or serial number, the stock on the bin and the released quantity.

Posting does two things through the Service Layer: it updates the pick list in B1 with the picked quantities, bins, batches and serial numbers, and then creates one delivery per customer, or an issue for production for a production order. Short on a line? KoonScan shows 3 of 5 and warns; the rest stays open on the sales order and is delivered later. Warehouses with a staging bin can stage first and deliver when the truck arrives. After posting, Pack divides the delivery into packages with type and weight, puts them on the delivery in B1 (Go To → Packing Slip) and prints a label per package. Orders without a pick list can be delivered straight from the sales order.

The limits: no wave picking; pick list rows for A/R reserve invoices and inventory transfer requests are shown but not picked; and the delivery contains only what was picked in KoonScan, so quantities picked earlier in B1 on the same list are delivered from B1. More on the KoonScan page; for allocating bins, see the guide on bin locations.

Sources: SAP Business One 10.0 help documentation (Pick and Pack, Pick Pack and Production Manager window with its selection criteria and Open, Released and Picked drawers, Pick List window, Picking Items for Shipment, Creating Delivery and A/R Invoice Documents with Pick and Pack, Bin Locations in Pick and Pack, Pick List Generation Wizard, Assigning Batches or Serials in Pick and Pack Process, Creating and Printing Packing Slips, Package Types - Setup, Sales Order: Logistics tab, Business Partner Master Data: Payment Terms tab); the Service Layer API reference of SAP Business One 10.0 (PickLists, DeliveryNotes). SAP and SAP Business One are trademarks of SAP SE.