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Independent IFS Cloud practice · Supply Chain
How a Shipment Order moves stock between sites and remote warehouses without a trade order
An IFS Cloud shipment order moves goods between sites and remote warehouses of one company through the normal shipment and receipt process, with no sales parts, purchase parts or internal customers behind it. Use it when the move needs a hand-over, a transit step and a receipt; use a transport task when the goods stay inside the building.
Key takeaways
- The 25R2 documentation lists four directions: site to site, site to remote warehouse, remote warehouse to site and remote warehouse to remote warehouse, always inside one company.
- A shipment order is executed through the shipment and receipt processes, so the usual shipment steps apply as they do for a customer order.
- For inventory parts, the goods sit in the internal order transit after delivery until the receipt moves them into stock at the destination, and the order closes only when everything is received.
- A shipment order counts as supply and demand in availability planning, order proposals, MRP and master scheduling before the stock arrives.
- Goods that were delivered and never received are the exception worth a daily check, because they are in stock nowhere.
Moving stock from one site to another looks like one action, but IFS Cloud has three tools for it, and the wrong choice shows up later as missing material or as master data nobody wanted. The trade-based tool is covered in Mastering Distribution Orders in IFS Cloud. This article covers the other one, the shipment order, and the point where its goods can disappear: the gap between delivery and receipt. Every product statement below comes from IFS documentation pages or community threads that I opened, and I mark which is which.
1.What is a Shipment Order in IFS Cloud?
A shipment order is an IFS Cloud order that requires and carries out an internal goods movement between sites and remote warehouses in the same company. The 25R2 documentation page About Shipment Order lists four scenarios: site to site, site to remote warehouse, remote warehouse to site and remote warehouse to remote warehouse. It also notes that a move involving a remote warehouse can be intra-site or inter-site.
Execution runs through the shipment and receipt processes. The page states that shipment orders are supported for inventory parts, no parts and non-inventory parts, and that manual creation of a non-inventory part is not handled. For no parts and non-inventory parts the move starts from the receipt, and the delivery and receipt record no inventory transactions. A community thread titled with 21R1 describes the shipment order as introduced in that release, so a system on an older release will not have it.
A remote warehouse is, per the 25R2 Remote Warehouse page, a warehouse that is not strictly related to the site geographically and has a different address from the central warehouse. Typical uses named there are a moving warehouse such as a service van, and a warehouse at another address that still belongs to the site. The same page adds that such a warehouse can be temporary and related to a customer or a specific project.
2.How is a Shipment Order built and how do you start one?
A shipment order has a header and lines, and both carry one of five statuses: Planned, Released, In Progress, Closed or Cancelled. The order starts as Planned, becomes Released when you release it for execution, turns In Progress while the shipment runs, and ends Closed once everything is received into stock.
- Header: the wanted receipt date (which defaults to the lines), the sending and receiving site or remote warehouse, and delivery information such as ship via, forwarder, shipment type and lead times.
- Lines: the parts and quantities to move. Dates are back-calculated from the wanted receipt date using lead times, and you can overwrite both.
- Reservation: for inventory parts you can reserve manually on the line, and availability control can be applied to shipment orders.
The second way to start is from stock. The documentation describes initiating the move for parts or handling units that already sit in stock, which adds them to a new shipment order as reserved. This works for material in picking, arrival or QA locations. When the move starts from an arrival or QA location, the purchase order receipt is recorded on the line, the selected quantity leaves that receipt, and it returns to the receipt in the new location once the shipment order is received. That is useful when goods arrive at one address and the final receipt must happen at another.
3.What happens between delivery and receipt?
A released shipment order connects to a new or existing shipment, and from then on the outbound process is the standard one: reserve, create pick list, pick, pack into handling units, deliver, print the delivery note and send dispatch advice. The connection happens automatically at release, through a command on the overview page, or by hand from the available lines on a shipment; the first two follow the rules of the shipment type. If you work with the outbound side regularly, see Advanced Picking Strategies in IFS Cloud and Understanding Consolidated Shipments.
For inventory parts, the material is under transportation at delivery and can be tracked. The documentation lists what is visible in transit: part number, lot or batch, serial and quantity, the sending and receiving site or remote warehouse, the handling units the parts are packed into, and the ownership type, owner and owner name. It adds that this is the same internal order transit handling used for multi-site orders.
On arrival the inbound receipt process takes over: register arrival, receive an incoming dispatch advice as parts or handling units, manage receipt in arrival or QA, and move into stock through putaway.
Delivery and receipt write paired inventory transactions. The 25R2 page names these:
- Within one site:
SHIPODWHS-on delivery to a warehouse andSHIPODWHS+on receipt from a warehouse. - Between sites of one company:
SHIPODSIT-on delivery andSHIPODSIT+on receipt, plus anINTORDTRtransaction at delivery. - Undoing a delivery:
UND-SHPODWwithin a site,UND-SHPODSbetween sites, andUNINTORDTRin the inter-site case.
Those codes come from the documentation page, not from a system I tested, so confirm them in your own release before you build a report or a filter on them.
One setting removes the gap altogether. If a shipment type has Automatic Receipt enabled, running Delivery on the shipment also triggers a receipt and closes the shipment order. For a remote warehouse this needs the Default Receive Case for the inventory part with a matching default location, and the message class DESADV set up at company level, because dispatch advice carries the transfer. The documentation gives a pickup for a remote warehouse van as the example.
4.Does a Shipment Order affect planning and availability?
A shipment order is a required goods movement, so planning treats it as both demand and supply. According to the documentation, the demand quantity is the order quantity minus the shipped quantity, due on the planned due date. The supply quantity is the order quantity minus the arrived quantity, due on the planned receipt date. Goods that arrived and wait in arrival or QA count as supply with the lead times in arrival or QA applied.
The same order can therefore appear as supply and as demand when it moves inside one site, with different dates because a lead time sits between them. These elements are considered in the inventory part availability planning tabs and in the availability check of a shipment order, as well as in order proposals, MRP and master scheduling. The documentation also notes that a shipment order can be a demand and supply before the stock exists, unlike a transport task.
A remote warehouse can be made not nettable by giving it a default part availability control ID that is not nettable. The material is then dedicated to that warehouse and is not supply or demand outside it. The documentation gives a service van with material dedicated to coming jobs as the example. For multi-site planning context, see Architecting Intelligent Distributed Fulfilment.
5.Shipment Order, transport task or distribution order?
The three tools differ in whether a shipment and receipt step exists, whether stock must already be on hand, and what master data they need. The table below uses only statements from the 25R2 pages About Shipment Order, Distribution Orders and Create Transport Task.
| Question | Transport task | Shipment Order | Distribution Order |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intended use | Internal stock movement within the four walls of the building | Internal goods movement between sites and remote warehouses of one company | Internal trade between sites, with internal customers and suppliers |
| Shipment and receipt process | No hand-over, transit or receipt step | Yes, executed through the shipment and receipt processes | Yes, through the customer order and purchase order it creates at release |
| Stock must exist when you ask for the move | Yes, no way to require material in advance | No, it counts as supply and demand before the stock is there | No, a planned order shows as demand on one site and supply on the other |
| Remote warehouses | A move between sites and remote warehouses is possible, but the page recommends it for movement inside the building | Supported in all four directions | Cannot handle goods movement with remote warehouses |
| Master data for internal trade | Part and user must exist on the other site for a cross-site move | No sales parts, purchase parts, customers or suppliers needed | Internal customer and supplier, sales part and purchase part (created automatically at release if missing) |
| Between companies | Not covered on the page I read | No, one company only | Supply and demand site can be in the same or different companies |
The Shipment Order page also lists what it does not handle: consignment stock or supplier-owned parts, manual creation of non-inventory parts, and goods movement between companies. If you need the last one, the distribution order is the documented route. The mechanics of that route are in the sibling article on distribution orders.
6.Which problems do users report on the community?
Two IFS Community threads describe two set-up problems. They are single reports from specific releases, so treat them as a prompt to test, not as a permanent rule.
- Receiving into a location inside a remote warehouse. In a thread tagged 23R2, a user shipped from a remote warehouse to a site and wanted to receive into a location of the remote warehouse that belongs to that site. Remote warehouses did not appear in the receipt list of values for a shipment order, although they did for a purchase order. The reply marked as the best answer explains that the receiver of the shipment order, site or remote warehouse, is treated as a separate address location where the goods must be received, and that delivery places the goods in the inventory part internal order transit with the delivering and receiving site or remote warehouse, so the receipt must match them. A second reply in the same thread states this is not a setting and suggests a customization of the list of values for that special case. Check the behaviour in your release.
- Mandatory delivery terms. In an older thread, a user creating a shipment order from stock in a remote warehouse to a site in the same company got an error that delivery terms were not defined. The reply quotes the field description, which distinguishes the combinations: both ends sites, the Supply Chain Matrix for Site page; receiver a remote warehouse, the Remote Warehouse tab of that warehouse; remote warehouse to site, not applicable. The Company, Address, Supply Chain Information tab is named as a further source when no default was fetched and the remote warehouse was created automatically through a Work Task. The user, whose move was exactly the remote-warehouse-to-site case, confirmed that filling in the company's supply chain information removed the error. The thread does not name a release.
The fix in both cases sits in master data, not in the order. That is worth checking before go-live, because the symptom appears at the moment someone has a truck waiting.
7.How do you catch goods that were delivered but never received?
Goods that were delivered on a shipment order and never received are an operational exception: they left the sending location, they are in the internal order transit, and they are available in no location. The documentation gives you the signals. The order stays In Progress until everything is received, the supply element carries a planned receipt date, and the transit view shows what is still under transportation with its sender and receiver.
A person can look at that view every morning. The same check can run as a scheduled read of those records against the planned receipt date, with the late ones sent to the people who can chase the carrier or the receiving dock. That is how exception monitoring works in general: the data already exists in IFS, and the job is to read it on a schedule and tell the right person before the planner notices the gap on a stock list. Which projection exposes the transit and shipment order records in your release is something to confirm before building any such check.
The SCM Automation Pack is built on that principle: a scheduled, read-only read of IFS data over OData that turns exceptions into alerts. I am not claiming a ready-made check for goods in transit; whether it fits your estate is a scoping question for a call. Nothing is installed in your IFS, so a release update leaves nothing of ours for you to retest; compatibility with a new release is checked on our side under the subscription.
Book a 30-min call See the SCM Automation Pack
For the wider view of working with sites, see Multi-Site IFS Cloud Implementation and Flexible Reservations on the consulting site.
8.Frequently asked questions
What is a Shipment Order in IFS Cloud and when should I use it?
A Shipment Order in IFS Cloud requires and carries out an internal goods movement between sites and remote warehouses of the same company. Use it when the move needs a shipment and a receipt, for example from a central warehouse to a service van, and you do not want to create sales parts, purchase parts, customers or suppliers just to represent an internal trade.
What is the difference between a Shipment Order, a transport task and a distribution order?
A transport task moves stock that is already available, mainly inside one building, with no shipment and receipt step. A Shipment Order moves goods between sites and remote warehouses of one company through the shipment and receipt processes. A distribution order handles internal trade between sites with internal customers and suppliers, and per the 25R2 documentation it cannot handle remote warehouses.
Can an IFS Cloud Shipment Order move stock between two companies?
No. The 25R2 About Shipment Order page states that the shipment order does not support goods movement between companies. A distribution order, by contrast, can have the supply site and the demand site in the same or different companies, so it is the documented route for that case.
Why can't I receive a Shipment Order into a location inside a remote warehouse?
In a community thread tagged 23R2, the receipt list of values for a shipment order did not offer remote warehouses as a receiving location, and the reply marked as the best answer says the receiver of the shipment order, a site or a remote warehouse, is the address where the goods must be received. If the receiver on the order is the site, receive at the site. If the goods belong in a remote warehouse, make that remote warehouse the receiver on the order.
How do I see stock that was shipped but not yet received in IFS Cloud?
After a shipment order for inventory parts is delivered, the goods are visible in the internal order transit with part, lot or serial, quantity, sender, receiver and the handling units they are packed in. The shipment order stays In Progress until everything is received into stock, so lines delivered but not closed are the ones to review.
Do Shipment Orders affect planning and MRP in IFS Cloud?
Yes. A shipment order counts as demand until it is shipped and as supply until it arrives, and the documentation names availability planning, the availability check, order proposals and MRP among the places that consider it. A remote warehouse with a not nettable default part availability control is the exception: its material is dedicated to that warehouse.
9.Sources
- Shipment Order, IFS Cloud 25R2 documentation
- Remote Warehouse, IFS Cloud 25R2 documentation
- Distribution Orders, IFS Cloud 25R2 documentation
- Create Transport Task, IFS Cloud 25R2 documentation
- Shipment, IFS Cloud 25R2 documentation
- IFS Community thread: Receiving shipment order (IFS Cloud 23R2)
- IFS Community thread: Shipment Order - Stock Movement from Remote Warehouse to Site
- IFS Community thread: Shipment Order in the new IFS 21R1
Documentation was read in the 25R2 edition. Behaviour can change between releases, so check the pages for the release you run. Community replies are individual users' answers, not IFS documentation.
10.About the author
Dariusz Myśliwiec: 18 years hands-on with IFS, today on IFS Cloud. IFS Certified Associate Consultant. PRINCE2® 7. Independent practice based in Kraków, delivered remotely across Europe and globally. You talk to the consultant who builds it, not a sales layer.
Selected clients from my IFS work: Fugro · LGC · BVI Medical · Betafence (PRÆSIDIAD) · Barlinek · NGK Ceramics · Newag · Oleofarm.
IFS is a registered trademark of IFS AB; this practice is not affiliated with IFS AB.
Stock in motion between sites and nobody sure where it is?
Bring me the move you need to run and the sites or remote warehouses involved. On a 30-minute call I will tell you which of the three tools fits, which master data to check first, and how to watch for goods delivered but never received.
