Descartes® is pleased to announce the latest Peoplevox release. This release includes the new stock take variance auto-approval mechanism, which allows you to automatically approve variances that fall within configurable thresholds. We are also continuing to work on improvements to action creation and will have more updates here in future releases. Below you will find a summary of everything included, grouped by category so you can easily focus on what is most relevant to you. For any questions about specific items, please reference the associated number (if provided) when contacting Descartes Customer Support.
Tip: Use our Ideas Portal to submit your enhancement ideas for Descartes Peoplevox. Click here for additional information and instructions on how to request access.
Action Creation Improvements
🟨 Action creation activities can now be searched for using the ID number displayed on the activity detail page. (1397160)
Stock Take Variance Auto-Approval
🟨 The new stock take variance auto-approval mechanism is now available. (1378262)
This new feature allows warehouse managers to define configurable thresholds and automatically approve variances that fall within those bounds. These thresholds are set at the Site level, and threshold management is controlled by a new permission:
Users with this permission can access variance approval settings on the Sites detail page:
From this page, you can:
Enable or disable auto-approval for the site
Select which variance thresholds will apply
Multiple thresholds can be selected, and a given stock take variance must pass all thresholds to be automatically approved.
Variances are evaluated and approved as a whole. If multiple items are counted within a single location and any one item exceeds the configured thresholds, the entire variance will require manual review and approval.
The threshold for item value can use any of the following item prices to determine value:
Buy price
Retail price
Wholesale price
A variance threshold of zero here means that the counted value must exactly match the expected value. Combining thresholds will allow you to carefully control which variances require manual attention. For example, a configuration may allow minor discrepancies for high-volume, low-value items, while requiring manual review for any deviation involving higher-value, lower-volume products:
Although not recommended, you can also enable auto-approval for all variances by disabling all thresholds:
Warning: Please be aware that if you do this, any variance counted on the mobile device during a stock take is immediately approved and impacts your inventory levels.
Other New Features and Enhancements
🟪 The Sites page on the web application now automatically loads the list of available sites without the user having to perform a search. (1378189)
Other Resolved Issues
🟩 We resolved an issue that could cause large despatches through the web application to stall and time out. (362062)
Preview of Changes Coming Soon
Action Creation Improvements
Action creation continues to evolve as we drive toward more configurable and more flexible options for batching orders and automating manual processes.
🟦 We are working on a new system for building order filters, to allow you to select exactly the combination of orders that you want to batch into an action. Our goal is to also allow users to filter orders using a broader range of properties, including:
Volumetric calculations per order: Helping optimize trolley-based picking and improving space utilization.
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Item-level logic: Enabling more advanced comparisons — for example, distinguishing between:
Orders where any item matches specific criteria
Orders where all items match those criteria
Our goal is to provide more flexibility and accuracy when building batches, so you can target exactly the right combination of orders for each action.
🟦 We plan to extend this new action creation (including the scheduling component) to other warehouse activities as well, including put away, replenishment and more in the future.
User Activity Reporting
🟦 We are working on some new and improved user activity reports that will help standardize user metrics between different warehouse activities. Our goal here is to provide you with a set of tools that you can use to measure performance, set benchmarks and track KPIs for warehouse operators.
Descartes ShipRush
You can also find the latest release notes for ShipRush here: ShipRush release notes