Resolve Over-Reserved Inventory

Overview

This task detects situations where the total reserved inventory across orders exceeds the actual available stock for a given SKU and warehouse. When over-reservation is found, it removes reservations from the newest orders first (FIFO), ensuring that older orders retain their reservations and are fulfilled first.

Identifier

When to Use

Enable this task when you:

• Have situations where inventory goes negative (e.g. an item is received, reserved, then found damaged or written off)
• Want automatic correction of over-reservation without manual intervention
• Need to ensure oldest orders are prioritized when inventory becomes insufficient (FIFO)
• Experience stale inventory reservation counters that don't reflect the actual state of order lines

Configuration Properties

Behavior

What It Does

1. Recalculates actual reserved quantities by summing ReservedInventoryQuantity from non-delivered, non-cancelled order lines — this avoids acting on stale Elasticsearch index counters
2. Identifies inventory items where actual reserved quantity exceeds available stock (i.e. reservedQuantity > inventory)
3. Builds a deficit map: how many units need to be freed per SKU and warehouse
4. Scans all non-delivered, non-cancelled orders with reserved inventory, sorted newest first
5. For each order line contributing to an over-reservation, reduces ReservedInventoryQuantity by the deficit amount and sets ReservedInventory = false
6. Stops removing reservations for a SKU once the deficit is covered
7. Saves updated orders in batches and reduces the inventory reservation counters accordingly

FIFO Priority

Orders are processed from newest to oldest. This means the most recently created orders lose their reservation first, while older orders retain theirs. This ensures that customers who ordered earliest are not disadvantaged by later stock shortages.

Stale Counter Protection

The task does not rely on the raw Elasticsearch ReservedInventory counter on inventory items, which can become stale (e.g. an order line has ReservedInventoryQuantity = 0 but the inventory item still shows ReservedInventory = 1). Instead, it recalculates the actual reserved quantity from order lines before determining whether over-reservation exists.

Internal Transfer Purchase Orders

Internal transfer purchase orders whose status has ReservesSourceWarehouseInventory set to true are included in the FIFO calculation. Their reserved quantity counts toward the deficit, and they are interleaved with orders by creation date — the newest item always loses its reservation first, whether that is an order or a PO.

When EnablePurchaseOrderReduction is false (the default), POs consume their share of the deficit in FIFO order to protect older orders from being incorrectly de-reserved, but their lines are not modified. The task result lists these as skipped.

When EnablePurchaseOrderReduction is true, the task also cancels the remaining undelivered quantity on affected PO lines. In the future we might add ReservedInventoryQuantity on PO lines to have the same reservation functionality as for regular orders.

Virtual Stock Locations

When a shipment uses a Virtual Stock Location (VSL), deficits on the VSL and the physical warehouse are tracked independently. If only the VSL is over-reserved, the newest orders lose their VSL reservation even if the physical warehouse still has sufficient stock.

Prerequisites

• Inventory management must be enabled (InventoryManagement.IsEnabled = true)
• Orders must use warehouse-based inventory reservations

Side Effects

• Reduces ReservedInventoryQuantity on affected order lines by the deficit amount and sets ReservedInventory = false (both on the order form and shipment level)
• Reduces the ReservedInventory counter on the corresponding inventory items
• Does not change order status or trigger workflow steps

Example Configuration

{
    "ImplementationType": "ResolveOverReservedInventoryScheduledTask",
    "Schedule": "*/15 * * * *",
    "IsDisabled": false,
    "Properties": [
        { "Key": "EnablePurchaseOrderReduction", "Value": "false" }
    ]
}

Recommended Schedule

Start with 15 minutes intervals (*/15 * * * *) and adjust if needed.

Related Tasks

• Overallocated Inventory - Corrects overallocation in Virtual Stock Location scenarios
• Try Reserve Order Lines — Re-reserves order lines when inventory becomes available again (the complementary task)