This article describes the two functions in PVX that help you handle inventory after it has been received into your warehouse: Put away and Move.

Using Put away

Put away is used to put away inbound inventory to locations within the warehouse. It does not increase your inventory levels; these were adjusted in PVX when you received the items. Instead, Put away allows items to be stored in bulk or pick locations after they have been received. Put away can be used for individual items through to entire containers that hold items (such as pallets).

There are various ways that you can organise how your inventory is put away (these are described in a separate article). The put away function follows a series of rules to suggest a destination for your items. Those rules will depend on which version of put away you are using.

Put away v1.0 (Stable)

This version aims to suggest a location using the following logic:

Find a bulk location that currently holds the item, otherwise:
Find a pick location that currently holds the item, otherwise:
Find a despatch location that currently holds the item (and is not picked), otherwise:
Find a quarantine location that currently holds the item, otherwise:
Find an empty location

In each case, if multiple locations are found, the app will suggest the one with the lowest location sequence.

The process on the mobile app prompts the user to scan one or more locations. The app will then generate a suggested destination for each of the items in there:

In the PVX mobile app, tap and select Put Away from the actions menu.
Scan or enter the barcode for the location into which your items were received when they arrived at the warehouse. This is usually a location in the Goods In area which needs to be regularly emptied so that fresh deliveries can be received. You can scan more than one location from which to put away items.
Tap NEXT. A list of the items in the scanned location(s) is displayed, showing where the Put away function is telling you that they need to be moved from and to, as well as the quantity to put away.
Tap one of the entries in the list. The Put Away screen is displayed.
Scan or enter the location where you are putting away the items, and also the barcode of the item.
Enter the number of items you are putting away.
Tap PUT AWAY.

You can use a different location to put away the items, for example if the first location is not suitable or not available:

Tap SKIP in the Put Away screen instead of scanning the To Location suggested by PVX.
Select a skip reason from the list on the screen (these have been previously set up in the web app).
When the app asks if you want to find another location, tap YES. An alternative To Location is suggested by PVX.
Scan or enter the new To Location barcode to put away the items there instead.

Put away 2.0 (Beta)

This documentation is still under construction and may be incomplete. Please check back regularly for updates.

Note: This version is entering beta in September 2024. The functionality described here is subject to change, and the pricing model is not yet confirmed. Please raise a support ticket or reach out to your customer success manager with any questions.

The new put away 2.0 framework is built on top of a highly flexible rules engine. There are two tiers of complexity for put away 2.0:

Directed put away 2.0: This tier uses a set of pre-defined rules to suggest a put away destination.
- This is intended to replace the put away 1.0 behaviour.
- During the beta phase, those rules are very simple:
  - Put away to pick with consolidation (try to find a location in pick that already holds the item, or failing that, a location in pick that has previously held the item)
  - Default put away rule (follows the default behaviour from v1.0)
Advanced put away 2.0: This tier opens up the flexibility of that rules engine and allows you to define your own custom logic to control how the app makes those location recommendations.
- This provides you with a web-based rules editor.
- The editor allows you to change the behaviour of the default rules that come with directed put away 2.0, or to define your own completely custom logic.

Tip: Put away 2.0 refers to locations and containers as holders. Locations and containers are both types of holder.

Advanced put away 2.0 - Overview

The key difference between directed and advanced put away is whether the mobile operator follows standard, default put away logic or custom put away logic crafted specifically for your operation.

The mobile operator uses the same mobile function in either case. The difference is in how the put away suggestions are generated.

This section provides an overview of how those custom rules work, and when you might want to use them.

Mobile operators perform a put away by scanning one or more location / container barcodes that hold items to be moved. The system then runs a series of rules against each of those items, looking for a suitable destination for each.

Put away rules are built from three key components:

A Rule Order, that defines the relative priority of the rule (lower numbers are higher priority)
An optional condition, that controls when the rule is applied
One or more rule steps, that control how the rule behaves by defining the logic used to find suitable locations and containers

When an operator requests a put away destination for an item, the app will follow these steps for each item:

Check the highest priority active rule, and evaluate the condition on the rule to see if it applies
If it doesn't, move on to the next rule
If it does, evaluate each of the steps on the rule, starting with the highest priority step
- Search the warehouse for one or more holders that match the rule step logic
- Sort those results by the sorting criteria of that rule step (by default, just the location's sequence in the warehouse)
If a given rule step finds a suitable holder, then it is displayed to the mobile operator
If the step cannot find a suitable holder, then the next step on the rule is checked. If all steps on a rule are exhausted without finding a suitable holder, then the app moves on to the next rule for which the condition applies

Tip: Generally, this means that you want to define narrow, specific rules with very high priority, and more broad general catch-all rules at a lower priority.

For some guidance on when you might want to consider custom put away rules, take a look at our rule library. These examples have all come from real-world scenarios that early-access users have solved using advanced put away 2.0.

For a more detailed walkthrough of the setup, mobile, and rule configuration workflows, see the relevant sections below.

Advanced put away 2.0 - Rule library

More examples are coming soon.

Put away returned items to high-priority pick locations

This rule aims to ensure that if items are returned to the warehouse, then they are placed in the highest priority pick locations (i.e. to ensure that returned items are picked and shipped preferentially over fresh stock from suppliers).

There are some interesting considerations in this rule:

The highest priority pick location is not necessarily the one at the beginning of the picking sequence
The rule helps to guide operators to the most easily pickable locations on a given rack or bay (the middle shelf, to avoid operators having to reach up or bend down)
The rule allows a degree of chaotic storage for these products by mixing SKUs, but only up to a point - the rule only permits up to 5 distinct product types in each location

The condition in this example filters the rule to only run when putting items away from specific locations that belong to a "RETURNS" group, for example a returns trolley or similar area.

The rule step filters the list of eligible locations to those that belong to a specific section of the warehouse, where the product diversity (the number of distinct product types) is below a threshold, and the location is a middle shelf (identified by applying a storage type to the middle shelf locations):

The sort condition applied here aligns with the zone layout created for use with Advanced Action Creation, where allocation for picking is prioritized based on the zone (e.g. "01 - High priority pick", "02 - Standard pick", etc):

The sort conditions are evaluated in the order they're listed here. The eligible locations are first sorted by the zone, and then within the zone, the locations are sorted by the location sequence.

You might consider adding additional rule steps to allow operators to put away to other shelves within the area if the middle shelves are unavailable. You could also change the sort direction on the location sequence; using a sort condition of "Zone name Ascending, Location IP Sequence Descending" would prioritize locations at the end of the high priority pick area over those at the beginning. Since those locations are typically closer to the pack bench, this could help you cut down on travel time for pickers or reduce the overall footprint of a given pick wave.

Put away to the item's typical permanent location

This is example shows a lower-priority rule that can be used as a catch-all bucket if the item you're putting away fails to match the conditions of any higher priority rules.

For this rule, a condition is not strictly required, if the intent is to act as a "catch-all":

The following two steps simply look for any locations that currently hold the product, or if none are found, the location that was last used to hold it:

You may also want to narrow the location selection down further to look for specific types (pick vs bulk) or consider adding a third step to find any empty location (for example if the item has never been in the warehouse before).

Put away 2.0 - Initial setup and permissions

To get started with put away 2.0, please reach out to support or your customer success manager, who can enable it on your account. We suggest enabling it on your QAC environment to begin with.

Once it is enabled on your account, your users with the administrator role will be able to grant permission to the web app configuration screens (for advanced put away 2.0) and the mobile workflow (for both directed and advanced put away 2.0):

For the web app configuration workflow, you can choose who is permitted to view the rules defined in the system, as well as who is permitted to create and use those rules:

And for the mobile workflow, you can control which users are permitted to interact with the new 2.0 workflow, as well as:

Limit who is permitted to use the search function to look up locations / products (to enforce barcode scanning),
Restrict users from overriding the suggestion made by the system (by default, operators can override the suggestion, but this can be disabled on a per-role basis), and
Allow users to choose specific rules to run, rather than relying on system intelligence to determine the appropriate rule (more on this in the rule configuration section below).

Put away 2.0 - Mobile workflow

Whether you use the default put away logic in directed put away 2.0, or use your own custom rules created with advanced put away 2.0, the workflow on the mobile follows the same set of steps, and is largely unchanged from the previous (1.0) version of put away that you may already be using.

To use this workflow you must have the "Perform put away" permission enabled, as described in the initial setup and permissions section. Users with this permission will see a new option on the navigation menu:

Tapping on this option will launch the following, new put away 2.0 workflow:

Note: The put away 2.0 mobile workflow uses the new PVX+ app. If you do not already have this installed, you may be prompted to download it at this point. The PVX+ app runs alongside the standard PVX app, and is used for new and experimental functionality.

On the first step, the operator will be prompted to scan a location or container from where they want to put away items:
The operator can scan any number of locations or containers here. They can also scan a location group, which acts as a shortcut to scanning the individual locations underneath it:
After selecting one or more locations / containers, the operator taps Next. The app will check the contents of the scanned locations, and generate a put away suggestion for each product inside:
The app will present the list of items, and these can be sorted by the destination location for each, effectively generating a walk route for the operator:
The operator taps on one of the items to put it away:
From here, the operator is prompted to scan the destination location and the product. After scanning the item, they are prompted to enter the quantity to move. Composite barcodes are supported here, as well as manual selection of UOMs if you need to move boxes or pallets:

Some additional notes on the put away process:

The operator can choose to override the suggested destination, unless their role permissions require that they follow the suggestion.
The operator can choose to skip the suggested destination. If they do so, the system will generate an alternative suggestion using the same logic.
Operators can skip multiple suggestions for a given item. Skipped suggestions will not be suggested again for that product while the operator remains in the put away workflow.
Skips are not remembered between sessions. If operators are consistently skipping suggested destinations, consider reviewing your put away rules logic to ensure that it aligns with your desired product flow.
Operators can check the details of the item to see where current inventory is held by tapping Inventory:

Advanced put away 2.0 - Rules configuration

To customize your rules logic, you need to use the new Put away rules (Beta) workflow on the web application. Once you have enabled the permission in the setup steps above, you can find it in the navigation menu on the left under Warehouse > Setup:

This will display the list of all put away rules currently defined in your system:

You can use this screen to quickly reorder and enable / disable different rules. You can drill into individual rules to change the way they work using the Edit icon on the right of each row. Additionally, you can create new rule through the Plus icon in the top right of the grid.

Rule details

Creating or editing a rule will direct you to the rule details page, where you can define specifically how you want the rule to behave.

Conditions

The condition determines when the app will run the rule. The condition is simply a true / false check. If the condition is met, then the rule is run. Otherwise, the app will move on to the next rule.

Tip: You can use this to set up specific workflows for different stock movement scenarios. For example, you might have a rule that you only want to operate on particular product types, so you could set up a condition to just look for that attribute on the item.

To enable a condition, click the toggle button:

Conditions are evaluated against the specific unit(s) of inventory being put away. That means you can look at properties on the item, but you can also examine properties of the holder from which it is being moved, as well as the quantity to move. These can be combined to form more targeted conditions as needed.

Many of the fields available here are self-explanatory, but there are also some more advanced conditions available here that are not exposed elsewhere in the app:

Put away quantity: This condition sets the total quantity of the specific product being moved. This is evaluated separately for each holder, so if an operator scans two locations that each contain 5x Item A, this condition will be checked twice, with a value of 5 units each time.
Is in container?: This condition is a true / false check on whether the items are being moved from a container.
Location group: This condition checks the immediate parent location group of the location from which the items are being moved. It does not look multiple levels up the group hierarchy, so if you want to define a rule for every location under some top- or mid-level group, you would need to use a condition that examines something like the barcode prefix or storage type.
Storage type: This condition checks the storage type assigned to the location from which the items are being moved. See the storage types section below for more information.
Inventory already exists in locations where barcode: This condition works in combination with the condition below.
Inventory do not exist in locations where barcode: These conditions allow you to examine whether this particular product is already present elsewhere in the warehouse
- This can be useful in scenarios where you want to maintain some inventory in a particular area of the warehouse, and move any surplus inventory to another area
- For example, after receiving a high sale volume item, you may want to act differently depending on whether the item is currently present in a fast-mover location, such as putting away directly to pick, to avoid having to replenish from bulk

Rule steps

A rule step determines which holders are suitable for the selected rule. Every rule must have at least one rule step. You can think of a rule step as a saved search for holders. When the app runs the rule step, it searches for holders using the conditions you have defined, then sorts the results, and takes the first holder that it finds.

The process for building a rule step is very similar to building the condition. The difference is that the condition is ultimately a true or false question (whether or not to run the rule) whereas the rule step is a search for holders.

To add a new step to a rule, click the Plus icon in the top right of the rule steps grid:

Much like rules themselves, individual rule steps are also ordered. Rule steps at the top of the list will be run first, and the app will only move lower in the list if those first steps fail to find a suitable holder.

Use the Search for drop down to select your search criteria.

The available search options are detailed below. As with the condition, these rule steps are evaluated for each individual SKU being put away, and the quantity in each case is the quantity of that specific SKU to be moved:

Location is empty: A true/false search. If searching for true, returns only locations that contain no items.
Location contains no other different items: A true/false search. If searching for true, returns only locations that do not contain items other than the one being put away. Note that empty locations are returned by this filter, since an empty location does not contain items that are different from the current put away item.
Location contains any items: A true/false search. If searching for true, returns only locations that contain at least one item. These can be any items - either the SKU being put away, or different item(s).
Previous usage: A true/false search. If searching for true, returns only locations that have previously held the item. The system remembers the last used location of each type for each item. That means that up to four previous locations are remembered for each product - one for each of Pick, Bulk, Despatch, and Quarantine.
Holder type: A text search, returns only holders that match the specified type. This can be either "Location" or "Container".
Location type: A text search, returns only locations that match the specified use-type. The available use-types are Pick, Bulk, Despatch, and Quarantine.
Location or container name: A text search, returns only holders for which the name matches the specified comparison.
Location or container barcode: A text search, returns only holders for which the barcode matches the specified comparison.
Location group name: A text search, returns only holders for which the immediate parent group's name matches the specified comparison. Note that this only compares the holder's immediate parent group, it does not search the entire parent hierarchy.
Location IP sequence: A text search, returns only holders for which the full hierarchy sequence matches the specified comparison. This IP sequence represents the combined sequence of the holder plus all of the parent groups. For example, a location with sequence 001 under a group with sequence 002 will have a full sequence of 002.001.
Location sequence: A text search, returns only holders for which the local hierarchy sequence matches the specified comparison. This represents the local sequence of the location within the immediate parent group. For example, a location with sequence 001 under a group with sequence 002 will have a local sequence of just 001.
Storage type: A text search, returns only holders for which the location's storage type name matches the specified comparison.
Container type: A text search, returns only containers that match the specified type. The container types available by default are Pallet and Box.
Zone name: A text search, returns only locations for which the linked zone name matches the specified comparison.
Total quantity in location: A numeric search, returns only locations for which the current total quantity (before the item is put away there) matches the specified comparison. This counts the total number of individual units, summed across all SKUs in the location.
Product can be added and matches total storage volume (if defined):
- A true/false search. Uses a basic cubic volume calculation to determine whether the item(s) being put away will fit in the location.
- The app uses the storage type of the location to calculate the total cubic volume capacity of the location.
- The calculation simply multiplies the height, width, and depth of the location.
- It then calculates the total cubic volume of each item already in the location by multiplying the height, width, and depth of each SKU, and multiplying that by the quantity of the SKU.
- The available volume is the total location volume, less the current inventory volume.
- The app performs the same calculation for the item(s) being put away, and will only return locations for which the volume of existing items plus the items to be put away is less than the capacity of the location.
Product can be added and matches max storage weight (if defined): A true/false search. Uses the storage type of the location to determine the max available weight of the location. The app calculates the total weight of the existing inventory in the location. It then calculates the total weight of the item(s) being put away, and only returns locations for which the weight of existing inventory plus the weight of the item(s) being put away is less than the max weight of the storage type.
Item type diversity: A numeric search. The diversity represents the total number of distinct SKUs currently in the location. This can be used for controlling the maximum number of unique SKUs in each location, by only returning locations for which diversity is lower than a particular threshold. For example, searching for diversity less than 5 will ensure that users are never directed to perform a put away that would lead to 6 or more different products existing in that location.
Current usage: A true/false search. If searching for true, returns only locations that currently hold the SKU being put away.

Note that some of these filters specifically reference locations. If an item exists in a container, the container inherits the properties of its parent location.

Using storage types with put away

Coming soon.

Automatically refreshing put away suggestions

In some cases, performing a put away on mobile may affect the validity of other put away suggestions that have already been generated. For example, if you have rules set up to guide several items to the same location, then performing the first put away may result in that location no longer being eligible for the second item. To address this, you can allow devices to automatically update put away suggestions after each one is completed (Setting: Auto Allow Update Suggestions). This is controlled on role-level permission:

The settings control the visibility of a user-level setting on the device:

If the setting on user-level is enabled and the user sets Automatically update suggestions? to YES, then whenever that operator completes a put away of an item, the device will recalculate the suggestion for the outstanding items. For example, if your rules directed each item to an empty location, then putting an item away to an empty location would then refresh all of the other suggestions with the knowledge that the location the operator just used is no longer empty.

Note that depending on the complexity of your rules, this may result in a small operational slow-down while the device recalculates each of those suggestions. For this reason, it is generally suggested that this is left disabled unless there is a compelling reason to enable it.

Using Move

The Move function in PVX records the movement of inventory (items and containers) from one location to another within the warehouse. It can be used for many reasons in the WMS, such as to replenish pick locations with items from bulk locations (if auto-replenishment is not enabled on your account) or to transfer faulty or damaged items to quarantine locations before they are returned to the supplier.

To move items around the warehouse:

In the PVX mobile app, tap and select Move from the actions menu.
Select Items. The Move Items screen is displayed.
Scan or enter the barcode of the location that you want to move the item from.
Scan or enter the barcode of the item you want to move.
Enter the quantity of items that you want to move.
Scan or enter the barcode of the location that you want to move the item to.
Tap MOVE.

Notes:

To move more than one group of items, scan the barcode for each item and enter the quantities before scanning the To Location barcode.
To move all the items in the From Location, tap ; all the items will be listed on the screen and all are preset with their current quantities in the From Location. You can then simply scan the To Location barcode and tap MOVE, or if necessary, tap each item and adjust the quantities before scanning the To Location barcode.

To move entire containers around the warehouse:

In the PVX mobile app, tap and select Move from the actions menu.
Select Containers. The Move Containers screen is displayed.
Scan or enter the barcode for the container you want to move.
Scan the location that you want to move the container to.
Tap MOVE.

Moving between Sites

The Move function of the mobile app can also be used to move inventory directly between sites. Using the location lookup in the Move function, operators can filter the locations by site:

This video walks through the process of moving between sites.

https://youtu.be/mxHF390s4Sg

Availability is tracked at the site level, so moving inventory between available locations (pick, bulk, and despatch) in each site will trigger corresponding availability updates for each site. Moving into or out of quarantine locations will not affect the availability for the quarantine location's site. For example, moving 1x ItemA from a quarantine location in SiteA to a pick location in SiteB will result in an availability update for SiteB, but not SiteA. Moving that item from the pick location in SiteB back to a bulk location in SiteA would trigger an availability update for both sites.

Handling Inventory - Put away and Move