Decide what happens when a transfer moves less than was ordered

The field's own help puts it in one line each: Ask — users are asked to choose if they want to make a backorder for remaining products; Always — a backorder is automatically created for the remaining products; Never — remaining products are cancelled.

On Ask, validating a transfer where a line moved less than its demand opens a dialog headed Create Backorder?. It says You have processed less products than the initial demand, and offers three answers.

Validating several transfers in one go changes the dialog: instead of the two buttons it lists every transfer with a To Backorder toggle, so the remainder of one can be kept and another dropped in the same pass.

A backorder is an ordinary transfer. It is a copy of the original with its own reference, carrying the lines that were not completed, and its Back Order of field points back at the transfer it came from. The original gets a note in its chatter — The backorder … has been created — so the chain reads from either end.

Two details worth knowing. The backorder starts with no responsible user, whoever validated the first part. And if its operation type reserves At Confirmation, it reserves whatever stock it can the moment it is created; on Manually, it sits unreserved until somebody presses Check Availability.

Declining a backorder does not tell the purchase order or the sales order that a quantity has gone away. The transfer closes short, the document behind it still shows what was ordered, and the difference between the two is what the office has to notice. Where the shortfall would starve a later step — a delivery waiting on that receipt — WindoorERP logs an activity on the documents it affects rather than letting it pass in silence.

Returns are the exception to all of this. A transfer created as a return of another ignores the operation type's policy and never asks.

For receipts, Always is usually right: goods-in is busy, the supplier's shortfall is somebody else's problem to chase, and a purchasing clerk can cancel the remainder in ten seconds when the invoice arrives short.

For deliveries, Ask is usually right: the driver and the site know whether the balance is going out tomorrow, and that is a judgement worth capturing at the moment it is made.

Never is for the rare flow where a partial movement is the whole movement — an internal top-up of a shop-floor rack, where the remainder is simply not wanted.