How Applicable Inventory Replenishment Policies Are Applied to Product Items

Key Product Item Attributes

A product item represents the stock of a product at an inventory location, for example, the stock of 18 units of Phone A13 Pro product at the Los Angeles Warehouse location or the stock of 53 units of the Tablet A1 Pro product at the Reno Warehouse location. Product items have these key attributes.

• Product: The product that the product item belongs to.
• Location: The inventory location of the product item.

To learn more about records such as Product and Location, see Inventory Replenishment Data Model.

Key Inventory Replenishment Policy Attributes

An inventory replenishment policy is a policy for replenishing product items when they reach a predefined quantity. Here are the attributes of inventory replenishment policies that determine the product items that the policy applies to.

• Status: The status of the inventory replenishment policy.
• Effective Start Date: The date the inventory replenishment policy becomes effective.
• Effective End Date: The date the inventory replenishment policy is no longer effective.
• Product Reference Record: The product or the product category of the product item that the inventory replenishment policy applies to.
• Location Reference Record: The location of the product item that the inventory replenishment policy applies to. You can apply a policy to all locations or to a specific location.

An inventory replenishment policy can be applicable for one or many product items, based on the policy attributes. A product item can have only one applicable policy at a time.

Rules for Determining Applicable Policies

For a policy to be applicable for a product item, the policy must meet these basic conditions.

• Status: The policy must be active.
• Effective Duration: The date when the policy is applied to a product item must be between the effective start date and the effective end date of the policy.

The policy that most closely matches the product and location of a product item applies to the product item. If any of the policy attributes don't exactly match a product item, then the applicable policy is determined through a hierarchical approach of prioritizing policies.

Here are the rules that determine the priority of applicable policies for a product item.

• Exact Match: If a product item's product and location exactly match a policy's product and location, then that policy applies to the product item.
• Location Hierarchy: If a product item's location doesn't exactly match any policy's location, then a policy for all locations applies.
• Product Category: If a product item's product doesn't exactly match any policy's product, then the policies with the product category that the product item's product belongs to are considered.
  • Sole Product Category: If a product item's product doesn't exactly match a policy's product, then the policy with the product category that the product item's product belongs to is applied, if there's only one such policy.
  • Primary Product Category: The policy with the primary product category that the product item's product belongs to is applied if all of these conditions are met.
    • A product item's product doesn't exactly match a policy's product.
    • There are multiple policies with product categories that the product item's product belongs to, but only one of these polices is with a primary category.
  • Parent Product Category of Primary Category: The policy with the closest parent category of the primary category that the product item's product belongs to is applied if all of these conditions are met.
    • A product item's product doesn't exactly match a policy's product.
    • There are multiple policies with product categories that the product item's product belongs to.
    • There are no policies with the primary product category that the product item's product belongs to.

A policy isn't applied to the product item if any of these conditions are met.

• There are multiple policies with the primary product categories that the product item's product belongs to.
• There are multiple policies with the product categories that the product item's product belongs to, and none of these product categories are primary categories for the product.

Applicable Policies In Your Replenishment Process

In an automated inventory replenishment process, the Replenish Inventory invocable action identifies the applicable policy for a product item and performs the replenishment actions based on the policy.

To easily identify the applicable policy for a product item, inventory managers use the Applicable Inventory Replenishment Policy related list on the product item record page.