Hi John,
Great question! Currently, it is possible to restrict an item on an order to use any batch, be it a completed batch, one in progress or a batch that is just planned. However, it’s important to note that this doesn’t mean Breww will exclude this assignment from today’s stock availability. These two mechanisms are currently not connected.
When you create an order, it will deduct the assigned amount from your current available stock. If you have a planned packaging scheduled after the delivery date, you can still create the order, factoring in this stock. Nevertheless, your available stock for today will still show a reduction. The workaround explained above is still the best method I can suggest, which is unchecking the option in Product settings to “Include draft orders in product quantity allocated to orders” and leaving your large future orders as draft rather than confirmed. This is currently the most effective way to manage this situation.
A great new feature could be to prevent the available stock figure from decreasing when an order is assigned to a batch with planned packaging or delayed releases unless the ordered stock quantity exceeds the planned packaging or delayed release stock quantity. Essentially allocating stock from a planned packaging directly to an order to prevent an impact on your current available stock figure. I don’t think this would be an easy feature to implement, but if you want to raise it as a feature request, I am sure our dev team will be happy to review this for you.
I hope this answers your question, but let me know if you have any more questions at all.