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Oracle Inventory has always supported Ship To and Deliver To locations, but the actual value of them has traditionally been overlooked for expense receipts. When an inventory item is received, it may have a Default Putaway subinventory and locator. Advanced Inventory builds on this with additional putaway rules and task assignment. WMS is the ultimate end goal with putaway rules that include up to the minute volumetric calculations to ensure space is maximized against complex rules.
But Expense deliveries have traditionally just gotten the Deliver To Location, but at that point there is nothing in the system to track that sneakernet delivery. Receipt Deliveries is a newer Oracle feature, included in the Inventory SKU as part of Mobile Inventory, which addresses this final phase.
In a nutshell, it creates a Delivery Number for each package, lets us group packages onto various Carts, then as those Carts are taken around a building or campus, the packages may be Delivered, including the ability to take photographs or get signatures showing delivery confirmation.
Unlike Inventory, this works for items with and without an Item Number, and even with or without a Purchase Order. The system can automatically generate a Delivery when you process a PO receipt, but you can also create a Delivery manually with tracking information.
Create Delivery: This task is available on Mobile or Desktop. Look for the task named Receipt Deliveries or Receipt Delivery – yes, the task is named differently on mobile and desktop. When entering the information here, you can use Visual Builder Studio to make some minor changes to the form. For example, Description is required, but it may be defaulted if you don’t care to enter a value for each package. Fields like Quantity and UOM may also be defaulted, or hidden entirely as they are not required. At this point you also may select a Cart, or you can do this at a later point.
One common confusion: People wish they had one entry screen for all receipts; PO or packages. Unfortunately, that’s not the way Oracle has set this up and they do not seem likely to change this soon. The good news is that the links for each page are static, so you can embed them manually or through a guided journey to allow quick back and forth navigation between PO Receipts and Package Delivery creation
If you created the delivery, then you probably printed the label already. If the delivery was created as part of the expense receipt, then you may need to prin the label. You can prin tth elabel from the Manage Deliveries screen, which is desktop only. You can also assign to a cart at this point.
A note about carts: Carts cannot be deleted, only renamed. You may have a cart like “Gibby Building South” which is re-used for all deliveries to this building. It may be a cart, two carts, a pallet, a truck, etc: The cart exists as a concept for a group of deliveries, and the leading practice is to label these somehow so it’s clear that I am putting a package in one of them, whether it is a cart or a taped off box on the floor. Carts also support DFFs, so in the future when a public API is available, we may use a cart DFF to track current location or status of the Cart.
That’s right, one big limitation right now is lack of a public API. This should be coming before the end of 2027. Another limitation is that package delivery is primarily Create -> Cart -> Deliver. It doesn’t support multiple intermediate scans, other than the potential for future cart DFF. Finally, the assignment to Cart is basic. You can set a default cart by org, otherwise it is manual. Our recommendation is to consider a DFF on each Location that lists the route or Cart, this can be printed on the Delivery label as an indicator, and then the team can scan the package in to that Cart. It’s a roundabout method but it works well.
When it comes time to deliver these, you can deliver by a Cart or by a Location. Then, you can select one or more packages, making it easy to deliver everything at once if you operate with a central drop zone. Durin the delivery confirmation you would be able to take a picture and get a signature of the receipient, if available.
There is one more large missing piece here: A central dashboard or view in the system for people to query, such as by tracking number. The Delivery information is also not currently part of the requisition lifecycle. Of course, we have submitted ideas for these and more, but in the meantime rest assured that the data is all there in the database. We leave our clients with a report and query, so end users can find out where the package is or was; and management can be alerted for any undelivered or forgotten packages automatically.
Receipt Delivery in Oracle Mobile Inventory is the missing piece of the puzzle for last mile logistics in your organization, and this is a good fit application for every industry.
You may also notice a feature called Dock Logging, which is a standalone feature. All it does is let you scan a tracking number to say it arrived at a certain time. No way to associate it to a Receipt Delivery, nor to ensure it made it where it was supposed to go, it’s just a list of tracking numbers.