Soft Reservations in Inventory Allocation

Secure inventory for specific demand sources before picking physical devices off stockroom shelves. Soft reservations immediately decrease the available inventory count by using the Reserve Any Asset flow to prevent double-booking without assigning a specific serialized asset. This automated framework provides granular visibility into inventory states, prevents over-promising, and ensures accurate fulfillment while your team prepares physical devices.

Required Editions

Available in: Lightning Experience

Available in: Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions with Agentforce IT Service.

Prevent Double-Booking

When an IT fulfiller approves a hardware request, the fulfiller selects Reserve Any Asset for a chosen location. Soft reservations immediately decrement a location's available inventory count between the initial request and physical fulfillment. This update prevents other fulfillers from double-booking remaining stock before you pick the physical asset.

Note A system can show more assets than the actual available quantity. The Reserve Any Asset option creates a soft reservation. This reservation decreases available inventory counts to prevent double-booking without allocating a specific physical asset. To reserve a distinct, individually identified asset immediately, select Reserve Specific Asset instead.

Soft Reservation Lifecycle

The soft reservation lifecycle follows these stages:

Sourcing: Open a service request and review available inventory across stockroom locations.
Soft Reservation: Select Reserve Any Asset for a specific location to trigger a soft reservation instead of selecting a specific serialized asset.
Inventory Update: The system increments Quantity Soft Reserved on the related product item and decrements Quantity Available.
Conversion: Link a specific physical asset to the fulfillment order line item to consume the soft reservation. The asset status updates to Reserved, transitioning the inventory to a hard allocation.

Quantity Available Formula

For asset-based inventory locations, the system evaluates underlying data to determine the net inventory available for new requests:

Quantity Available = Quantity On Hand - (Quantity Soft Reserved + Quantity Allocated + Quantity Damaged + Quantity On Hold)

Administrative Constraints

To maintain data integrity and a reliable audit trail, soft reservation fields are subject to specific system constraints:

Read-Only Fields: For asset-based locations, quantity tracking fields, including Quantity Soft Reserved, derive automatically from underlying asset records or fulfillment orders. These fields are read-only to prevent manual inventory inaccuracies.
Full Allocation: The system doesn’t support partial allocation for a single order line item. If a location lacks inventory for the entire requested quantity, the system returns an error.
Automated Reversion: If you cancel a service request before pickup, the system triggers a deallocation. This process restores the available quantity to the general pool without affecting physical on-hand counts.