Requests

Catalog says what a part is. Stock says where it is. Purchasing says what is coming. Requests is the fourth question, and the only one with a deadline attached: what somebody is waiting for.

This is the store's screen. It lists every open job that still wants stock, one row per part, and tells you the one thing to do about each: set it aside, put it on order, or say what is holding it up.

Navigate to Inventory → Requests.

The parts list on a job is the request

Nothing separate has to be raised. The moment a technician or the office adds a stock-tracked part to a job's line items it is promised to the store — the row appears here as Set aside — still to pull, for the job's lead technician — and it follows the line as the quantity changes. When the store hands the part over and the technician accepts it, the row leaves the worklist by itself.

Only jobs that are scheduled, in progress or on hold are counted. Completed and cancelled jobs never appear, however their parts ended up.

One row per part, per job

If a job asks for the same part on two lines, the store still only walks to the shelf once — so the two lines are shown as one row, with the quantities added together. That is also the grain reservations work on, so what you set aside always matches what the row is asking for.

A free-text line — something typed by hand rather than picked from the catalog — has no catalog item behind it, so it gets a row of its own and is flagged as not stock-tracked.

The numbers on a row

Column	What it means
Needs	The quantity on the job's line items.
Set aside	Reserved for this job and not used yet — booked, pulled, or already accepted by the technician.
Taken	Booked to the job in the ledger — at completion, or by a scan on the job — net of anything returned.
Still open	Needs − Taken − Set aside. For a stock-tracked part this is normally zero, because the card promises it the moment it is typed; it is what a free-text or untracked line still has nobody looking at.
On hand	Physically in stock across every location.
Free	Available to promise across the whole control room, after every other job's demand and every other reservation. Not just this job's share.

Free is deliberately the whole-company figure. A part that is on the shelf but already promised to another job is not free, and the store needs to see that before it promises it twice.

What the state is telling you

Each row carries one state — the first of these that is true, most urgent first:

• Went negative — the ledger already issued this part and the location went below zero. The stock was given away without being there. This is owed, whatever the shelf says.
• Not enough stock — stock-tracked, and the item is oversold: the promise is written, but there is less free across the control room than the promises need. This is the buy signal for tracked parts.
• Not stock-tracked — still open, but the item is not on the ledger, so no shelf figure can answer it. Someone has to decide.
• On order — a purchase order raised against this job covers what is still open. Only an order that has been approved or sent counts; a draft does not. The order number on the row opens its sheet in Purchasing, with the expected date beside it.
• Ready to set aside — still open (a line the card did not promise by itself) and there is enough free stock.
• Set aside — still to pull — reserved, but not yet physically taken off the shelf.
• Pulled — waiting for collection — off the shelf and standing in the store.
• On its way to the technician — handed over, not accepted yet.
• With the technician — accepted. Off the store's plate, not yet used on the job.
• Parked — the store put it aside deliberately; the reason is on the row.
• Dealt with — cleared by hand, off the worklist.
• Taken from stock — fully issued. Nothing left to do.

Cover follows the stock, not just the reservation

A reservation does not stop at pulled. Handing it over moves it to with the technician, and stock can also be sent to a technician for a job with no reservation behind it at all. All of that counts as covered here — the same way it already counts against Free — so the tab never tells you to set aside a part that is sitting in someone's van.

The last three states are past the point where the store can do anything, so they leave Needs action and live under To set aside and All.

Why a stock-tracked part starts at "set aside"

Adding a stock-tracked item to a job card promises it to the store the moment it is typed — nothing moves — so those parts arrive here as Set aside — still to pull for the job's lead, and they leave when the store hands them over and the technician accepts. Only at completion is the part booked to the job, from the van that holds it; a Went negative row after that means a van was short when the job closed.

Parts that are not stock-tracked, and free-text lines, never move anything at all. They stay open until someone acts on them — which is what Mark dealt with is for.

The number on the tab

The Requests tab carries a count of how many open jobs are waiting on the store, so you can see there is work without opening the page. It is normally a quiet grey; it turns red the moment a line has gone negative, because stock the ledger gave away and did not have is worth interrupting someone for. Hover it for the breakdown.

It disappears when there is nothing waiting, and also when your role cannot read the list — an absent count never means zero.

The filters

• Needs action (the default) — everything except what is fully taken from stock or cleared by hand.
• To buy — went negative, not enough stock, or on order.
• To set aside — the whole custody chain: ready to set aside, still to pull, waiting for collection, in transit, and with the technician.
• Dealt with — what was cleared by hand, and why.
• All — every request on every open job, settled ones included.

Search covers the job number, title, site, customer, item name and SKU, and runs across the whole control room rather than the page on screen. The counts in the line above the list are always company-wide, so they do not move when you search or turn a page.

Setting stock aside

A stock-tracked part on the card is already set aside on paper, so the first thing the store does with it is physical: Mark pulled moves the row to Pulled — waiting for collection once the part is off the shelf. Handing it over is done from Stock → Handovers or the job's Stock tab; the row then follows it to On its way to the technician and With the technician on its own, and leaves the worklist.

Set aside… in the row menu remains for the odd part the card did not promise by itself. It opens a short form with the item, job and quantity already filled in; you choose only what the row cannot know — which location it comes off, and which technician it is for. Setting aside more than is free is allowed, exactly as a card line that promises more than is free is allowed: the store needs to record that it promised more than it holds, and the shortfall shows on this row and on the picking list as what turns it into something to buy.

A promise settles itself when the job completes, or when the technician scans the part on the job, so nothing has to be closed off by hand.

Ordering for a job

Order N items on a job's header raises one purchase order for everything that job is short of — not one per line. Every line on it is tagged to the job, which is what lets the delivery be set aside for the job the moment it is booked in through goods receiving, and what tells the technician their parts have arrived.

The order is created as a draft on Purchasing → Orders. A draft is a wish: the rows read On order only once someone approves or sends it — a draft, or an order waiting for approval, does not count anywhere. Orders over the control room's approval threshold wait for an approver first.

Quantities default to what actually has to be bought:

• Where a part went negative, the whole owed quantity.
• Where a part is stock-tracked, this job's share of the item's oversell — what the promises need beyond what is free — the store rarely wants to buy a part it is already holding.
• Where a part is not stock-tracked, the whole outstanding quantity, because there is no shelf figure to net against.

You can change any of them, untick lines, and either raise a new order (choosing the supplier, the expected date, where to deliver to and a reference — the job number by default) or add the lines to an order that is still a draft or awaiting approval. Once an order has been approved or sent its lines are fixed, so it is not offered.

The same shortfalls also appear on the buying desk — Purchasing → To buy — grouped by supplier alongside reorder breaches and van-kit shortfalls, with the reason and the order-by date on every line. Ordering from either place produces the same job-tagged draft.

A free-text line cannot be ordered. There is nothing in the catalog for the delivery to be received against, so it has to be added to the catalog first. The dialog says so rather than silently dropping the line.

Parking, clearing, and notes

Three things the row itself cannot work out:

• Park with a note — it stays on the list, marked Parked, with your reason showing on the row. Use it for "supplier back-ordered until Friday".
• Mark dealt with — it drops off the worklist. Nothing moves in the ledger — this only records that the store has nothing left to do. Use it for "client supplied their own", or a line typed in error. It can be reopened.
• Notes — a running thread on the request. The latest note shows on the row; the dialog holds all of them.

Notes are append-only. Yesterday's reason is never overwritten, so "why has this been sitting here for a week" always has an answer.

Permissions

Reading the list needs the same access as the rest of Inventory.

Every action on it — setting aside, marking pulled, ordering, parking, clearing, and adding notes — needs the Stock controller role (the Manage stock & warehouse permission), the same key the rest of the stock surface asks for. Company owners have it automatically. Without it the page is fully readable and the buttons are simply not there.

Next steps

• Stock — the ledger behind these numbers, reservations, handovers and posting exceptions.
• Purchasing — the buying desk, where the orders raised here end up, and how receiving settles them.
• Products & Services — tracking modes, which decide whether an item can answer a request at all.
• Create a job — line items are where a request is born.