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A directs warehouse staff to stage job materials at the point of use. Each line specifies the material, quantity, source, and destination bin at the operation’s . Picking transfers stock without consuming it; production consumes it later.

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What a picking list picks against

Picking is driven by production, not by shipping. A list is generated from job operations that still have unstaged material. Alforse looks at each operation’s materials, checks whether the operation’s own lineside bin already holds enough on hand to cover them, and lists only what’s genuinely outstanding. An operation already on a non-cancelled picking list won’t be offered again, so you can’t accidentally pick the same work twice. Every line ties back to a specific job, job material, and (usually) job operation. There is no picking against a or a sales order here. Shipments pull finished goods out to customers and are their own document; picking stages raw and component material into a job.

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Header and line status

A picking list header moves through five states. It starts at “Draft” and goes to “In Progress” when someone starts it. It ends “Completed” when every line is picked, or “Partial” when it was finished with a shortage or with material still unpicked. “Cancelled” is a terminal off-ramp.
Finishing the list is a deliberate action. Finish lands on “Completed” only when no line is outstanding and none is Short; otherwise it lands on “Partial”. Each line carries its own status:

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Short picks don’t silently close the list

When there isn’t enough stock, a picker enters how many were actually pulled and marks the line “Short”. That is a deliberate, human-acknowledged shortage, not an error.

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Where picking happens

Picking lists are generated and managed from the ERP, and the same lists are worked on the MES shop floor, where an operator opens an assigned list, taps “Start” to move it to “In Progress”, picks each line, and taps “Finish” to close it. Tracked items (serial and batch) are picked by scanning the specific lot.

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What posting a pick does to stock

A pick is a transfer, never a consumption. Posting one writes two balanced entries: a negative at the warehouse source bin and an equal positive at the operation’s lineside bin. On-hand doesn’t drop; it just relocates to the point of use. Alforse also repoints the job material at the lineside bin, so when production backflushes or issues the material, it draws from where the pick just put it.
  • Untracked material posts the transfer pair and marks the line “Picked”.
  • Serial and batch picks additionally record a movement, so the exact lot is traceable end to end. Picking part of a batch splits it: the picked quantity moves to lineside and the remainder stays behind as a new lot.
An unpick reverses the transfer, restores the warehouse source as the consumption point, and returns the line to “Pending”. Picked-but-unconsumed material is returned from the lineside bin to the warehouse automatically, so leftover staged stock never gets stranded at the line. Settings → Inventory → Returning unused picked material sets when: when the whole job completes (the default), or as soon as each operation is Done.