Master data a warehouse depends on

Warehouses have their own names for everything: their own warehouse ids, client accounts, product ids and pack sizes. A Warehouse Order that says "ship 2 of SKU NB-ROSE-50 from our Leeds site" means nothing to a WMS until each of those values is translated into its codes.

By the end of this lesson you will know which master data records hold those translations, and what to check before you send the first Document.

Products: SKU alignment first

The help centre calls SKU alignment "the single most common cause of integration errors and go-live delays". When a Document arrives, each line is matched by its product code. If the code does not match, Supply Lens holds the Document and raises an error.

There are two ways to match:

• Exact match: the warehouse holds the same SKU as your item master. A single character difference (a capital letter, a hyphen, a leading zero) breaks it.
• Cross-reference: a product identifier on the Product records the warehouse's code, and Supply Lens translates on every Document.

Some connectors have their own product identifier types, such as ControlPort Product ID. Clarus WMS receipt lines carry a Clarus product id: where no id is cross-referenced, Supply Lens looks the product up in Clarus by SKU when it sends, and refuses the whole receipt if any SKU cannot be found.

Locations: which warehouse is which

A Location in Supply Lens can carry identifiers for each system that knows it. Open Settings → Reference data → Locations, and use CREATE AND EDIT to add identifiers after creating the Location.

The Location identifier types include several warehouse-specific ones:

• Mintsoft Warehouse and Mintsoft Warehouse Id
• ControlPort Warehouse Id
• Logiwa Warehouse Code, Logiwa Warehouse Id, Logiwa Inventory Site Code and Logiwa Inventory Site Id
• Manhattan Warehouse Code
• Generic Warehouse Code, plus GLN for retailer-facing locations

This matters because a document's fulfilment location is how many connectors decide which warehouse an order ships from or a delivery arrives at. Clarus WMS, for example, resolves the warehouse from the fulfilment location's cross-referenced Clarus warehouse id, and only falls back to a default setting when there is none.

Parties: whose account is it?

A 3PL runs many clients from one system, so it needs to know which client account a Document belongs to. Party identifier types record this, for example:

• Mintsoft Client ID
• Clarus WMS Account Code, Clarus WMS Account ID, Clarus WMS Customer Code and Clarus WMS Customer ID
• Logiwa Client Code and Logiwa Client ID
• SSCC Prefix, used when pallet labels and despatch advices need SSCC numbers

Units of Measure: packs, cases and pallets

Warehouses often count in a different unit from your ERP. Two tools help:

• The Integration's Default Unit of Measure card forces every quantity sent or received on that Integration into one unit. Leave it unset to use each Product's default.
• Conversions on each Product say how many of one unit make another, for example how many packs fit on a pallet.

Clarus WMS shows why this matters: its sendStorageUnitQuantity setting works out pallets from the product's pallet conversion, and fails translation for any product without one.