Delivery Promise (ATP / CTP) and Backorders — A Guide from Scratch

A customer asks on the phone: "When can you deliver this?" There are 40 in the warehouse, the customer wants 60, a purchase arrives next week and a work order is open in the factory. The Delivery Promise window answers the question by calculating from stock, open purchase orders, work orders, the production schedule and past lead times, and writes why next to every date it gives. A remainder that cannot be met on time is not lost: it appears on the backorder list with its expected date, and when stock arrives the window suggests who gets it.

1. What this window is for

The window sits in the Sales / CRM group of the dock, next to Prices and Campaigns, and has three tabs:

Check stock — the delivery promise for one product, quantity and requested date, plus a 12-week ATP table (section 5).
Backorder — the remainders of open sales orders: how much is left, when it was requested, when it will be met (section 7).
Matching — a suggestion of which orders should get the stock that is free today (section 9).

The same calculation also feeds the delivery badge under every line while a sales order is entered (section 6). The window never changes anything by itself; an order changes only when you confirm it in Manage remainder.

2. The concepts you need

Term	What it means
On hand	The quantity physically on hand (the total of the usable warehouses).
Safety stock	The minimum level on the stock card (the warehouse level if a warehouse is selected). It is set aside when promising.
Blocked	Lots blocked by quality. They cannot be sold and do not count toward a promise.
Expected receipts	What has not yet arrived from open purchase orders and open work orders, on the date it is due.
Committed	Open sales order remainders, the component needs of work orders and active reservations — the quantity that will leave stock on its date.
Cumulative ATP	Available-to-promise: the quantity that can be promised up to that day without breaking later commitments.
Period ATP	The promisable quantity added in that week only (the week's increase in cumulative ATP).
CTP	Capable-to-promise: when stock is not enough, the delivery promise given by the production schedule (APS).
Backorder	A sales remainder still on the order and not yet shipped, which either cannot be met on the requested date or was already partially shipped.
Confidence	How firm the promise is: high (in stock or on the official schedule), medium (a purchase or production due date), low (an overdue receipt or an estimate).

3. How the calculation works

The starting point is free stock: on hand − safety stock − blocked lots − active reservations. The result may be negative. After that, for every day, that day's receipts are added and that day's commitments are subtracted.

Cumulative ATP looks ahead. What can be promised for a day cannot exceed the tightest point after that day. Example: 100 are free today; an order of 80 is due on 10 October; a purchase of 50 arrives on 15 October. What can be promised today is not 100 but 20 — if you gave all 100 today you would let down the customer due on 10 October. From 15 October on, 70 can be promised.

Quarantine, subcontract and inactive warehouses do not count. Company-wide means the total of normal, active warehouses. For a product whose stock is not kept per warehouse the company total is used, and a warning says so.
A warehouse's ATP can never exceed the company ATP. When you pick a warehouse its stock and its receipts are used; but because commitments without a warehouse come out of the company-wide figure, the warehouse promise is capped by the company promise every day.
A receipt that has not arrived is not on the shelf. A purchase or production due today or earlier that has not been received is placed on tomorrow at the earliest; if its date has passed, with low confidence. Receipts more than 180 days away are not counted at all (so that no optimistic promise is given).
An overdue commitment comes first. A sales remainder whose delivery date has passed or is empty is placed on today; a new promise cannot jump ahead of it.

4. The order in which a promise is sought

Each line gets one single promise. The system tries the steps below in order and stops at the first step that gives an answer:

Stock. If what can be promised today covers the quantity → "Delivery: today ✓", high confidence.
Open purchase order or work order. The first day cumulative ATP covers the quantity is the promise date; the source is the last receipt that makes that day possible (purchase or production). For a work order the date is the order's finish on the official APS schedule; without an official schedule the rough plan, and without that the order's due date. Medium confidence; low if it relies on an overdue receipt.
APS delivery promise (CTP). If step 2 finds no date, or the date it finds is after the requested date, and the product has an active bill of materials, the missing quantity is asked of the production schedule. If the schedule gives an earlier date, that is used — the APS date as it is, not rounded again. If it is based on the official schedule the confidence is high, otherwise medium. If component stock is short, no promise is given; there is no production promise without material confirmation.
Lead time estimate. If there is a lead time measured over the last year from purchase order to receipt, the promise = today + that time. Low confidence; the badge shows a ~ in front of the date.
None of these. → "No delivery promise". No made-up date is given.

Partial promise. If part of it can be given today, the system says so too: "40 pcs can be given now, 20 remaining." The date of the remainder is found with the steps above. In one basket at most 10 lines are asked of the production schedule; for more, a "production schedule was not asked" warning appears.

5. Check stock: one line and the weekly ATP table

Enter the Stock code, Quantity, optionally the Requested delivery date and Warehouse (empty = company-wide), and press Ask for delivery date. At the top the product's badge and promise date appear, with the details below (quantity promisable today, source, confidence, chain of receipts).

Above the table are four figures: On hand, Safety stock, Blocked and Free at start. The table shows 12 weeks starting today:

Column	What it shows
Week	A seven-day slice (today + 7 days, the next 7 days…).
Expected receipts	The purchase and production quantity arriving that week.
Committed	The sales remainders, production component needs and reservations leaving that week.
Projected on hand	The free quantity left at the end of the week (start + receipts − commitments). It is red when negative: there is a shortage that week.
Cumulative ATP	The total that can be promised to a new customer up to the end of the week (looking ahead, section 3).
Period ATP	The promise quantity newly opened this week. It answers the sales team's question "how much of what arrives this week is still unallocated".

Below the table, the total of later commitments falling outside the 12 weeks is shown separately (Later commitment outside the table).

6. The delivery badge in order entry

While entering a sales order (operation = sales) a small badge appears under every line. It is recalculated about half a second after the product, quantity, unit, warehouse or delivery date changes. The quantity is converted to the main unit. If you ask for the same product on two lines, the second line sees the stock already taken by the first. If the calculation fails the badge is not drawn, but saving is not blocked.

Badge	Meaning
Delivery: today ✓	Can be given from stock right away.
Delivery: 3 Oct (purchase)	Met when an open purchase order arrives.
Delivery: 12 Oct (production)	Met by an open work order or the APS delivery promise.
Delivery: ~20 Oct (estimate)	No open receipt; estimated from the measured lead time. Confirm with the supplier.
No delivery promise	No step could give a date (section 4).

Colours: green = the promise meets the requested date; yellow = partly met, the date is an estimate or confidence is low; red = no promise, or the promise is after the requested date. In red the badge is followed by "The requested date … cannot be met."; when partial, by "… can be given now, … remaining".

The Why this date? link opens the details: the quantity promisable today, source and confidence, a note if the date comes from APS, the measured lead time if it is an estimate, the reason if material is short, and the list of receipts leading to the date ("3 Oct: 50 in from purchase order #120 · overdue").

Where does the requested date come from? There is no new field: the Delivery / Due date in the order header is the requested delivery date and applies to all lines. If lines need different dates, split the remainder into a separate order (section 8).

Confirmation on save. If a line has no promise, misses the requested date or is only partly met, the first press of Save does not save the order; the warning "N lines cannot be met on the requested date. If you save, the remainder stays open as a backorder" appears and the button becomes Confirm and Save. If you press it again within 30 seconds, the order is saved and the unmet remainder goes onto the backorder list. If the time runs out, confirmation is asked again. This is not a block but a deliberate decision gate.

7. The backorder list

This tab reads the remainders of all open sales orders. With partial invoicing the invoiced quantity comes off the order; what is left shows here. By default only problem lines are listed; tick All open lines, including those on time to see them all. You can filter by Account code and Stock code. The counters at the top give the number of lines, partially shipped, overdue and not met on time.

Status	When
Partially shipped (yellow)	The order has already been partly invoiced and this remainder was left behind.
Delivery date passed (red)	The requested date is before today and the remainder has still not been shipped.
Cannot be met on time (red)	There is no expected date, or it is after the requested date.
On time (green)	Only visible when the box is ticked: the remainder will be met on the requested date.

If a line fits more than one status, the order is: partially shipped → date passed → cannot be met on time. The list is sorted by requested date, then by order number.

Expected date = FIFO. The system hands out the product's free stock and future receipts to all open sales remainders in order: first the earliest requested date, on a tie the older order date, then the order number. A line's expected date is the first day on which all earlier remainders and itself are covered. Filters are applied afterwards, so even when you look at one customer the order is found with all customers counted.

Each row has two buttons: Open order opens the order card (from there you ship partly or in full with Invoice It), and Manage remainder starts the steps in section 8.

8. Manage remainder — three steps

Pick the action. Leave open as a backorder (nothing changes, the panel closes), Split the remainder into a new order or Cancel the remainder.
New delivery date (only when splitting). The default is the expected fulfilment date; you can change it.
Confirmation. What will happen is written in one sentence; Confirm applies it. Every step has Back and Cancel.

Split: the remainder moves to a new order delivered on the date you chose; the original order no longer has this line. Not all lines of an order can be moved (in that case change the order's delivery date); a measured (width × length) line cannot be split and is edited on the order card.
Cancel: the remainder of the line is removed from the order. If the order has no other lines, the order is deleted — which also needs the order deletion permission.
Safety: both actions go through the existing order endpoints (same validation, same audit trail). If someone else changed the order while you were looking, "The order changed in the meantime. Refresh the list." is shown and nothing is written. In the rare case that the new order is opened but the original cannot be updated, this is said plainly; remove the moved lines from the original order by hand.

9. Matching: who gets the stock when it arrives

Type a stock code (empty = all products) and press Suggest. For each product the quantity free today (free at start − non-order commitments due by today) is handed out to open sales remainders in the FIFO order of section 7. Each row shows the customer and order, the remainder, the To allocate quantity (green full / yellow partial) and the requested date.

The suggestion reserves nothing. Stock only really leaves when it is shipped: go to the order card with Open order on the row and invoice the suggested quantity with Invoice It. The invoiced quantity comes off the order; any remainder stays on the backorder list.

10. Dealer portal, field sales and Pulse

Dealer portal (B2B): under each basket line it says "Delivery: right away ✓", "Estimated delivery: 3 Oct" or "Contact us for the delivery date". No quantity is shown to the dealer — the server sends the dealer only the date, source, confidence and status; your stock quantity does not leak out.
Field sales (sales rep): the basket shows the same badge as order entry ("Delivery: today ✓", "Delivery: 3 Oct (purchase)"…).
Pulse: an order opens the full-page order entry screen; the badge comes from there.

11. On the phone

On a small screen (Garden + Step) the window opens with the same three tabs; tables become card lists, each card is one row. Manage remainder opens full-width from the bottom and shows the three steps one by one. The badge in order entry also appears under every line on the phone.

12. Who sees, who changes

Seeing (query, table, backorder list, matching, badge): an administrator, or one of the Orders, Invoices, Quotes, Stock cards permissions.
Changing (cancel the remainder / split into a new order): an administrator, or the Orders + Order issue permissions together. A read-only user, or a system with writing switched off, cannot change anything; if an order would be deleted, the order deletion permission is also checked.
The dealer portal works with a dealer session and field sales with a sales rep session; both see only the badges of their own basket.

13. Frequently asked questions

The stock card shows 100 but the promise says 20. Why? Because 80 of those 100 have already been promised to another customer for a later date. Cumulative ATP protects later commitments (section 3). In the weekly table the Committed column shows who is waiting.

Can the promise date differ from the production schedule? No. If the date comes from APS, the APS date is used as it is; the details say "The date is the production schedule's delivery promise (APS)" or "The date is the open work order's finish on the official schedule".

The badge is red; can I still save the order? Yes. The promise only informs; saving asks for a 30-second confirmation and the unmet remainder becomes a backorder (section 6).

Can I enter a separate delivery date per line? No; the delivery date is in the order header. Move a line that needs a different date to a separate order with Split the remainder into a new order.

Why is the badge yellow? The promise is either an estimate (~ in front of the date), partial, or low-confidence because it relies on an overdue receipt. Why this date? tells you which.