Tracking of palettes

Hi ​@JIRI.LAMBERT ,

this is a common requirement and one I've implemented before (with chemical totes rather than pallets, but the same concept applies).

The short answer is: yes, IFS can handle this, but I'd recommend using “Rental Management” rather than Handling Units.

Handling Units are great for tracking pallets through your internal supply chain… receipt, putaway, picking, shipment… but they don't have a built-in mechanism for getting them back from the customer. Once a handling unit leaves on a shipment, there's no standard return loop. 

Also, Handling Unit Types also don't currently have a direct link to inventory parts, so you can't easily track pallet stock levels either. IFS R&D has acknowledged this as a known limitation.

I’d recommend the Rental Asset approach: 
What works well is setting up the pallets as “Company Rental Assets” with serial tracking. The process looks like this:

1. Set up your pallet as an inventory part with serial tracking, and convert the ownership to Company Rental Asset
2. When you ship goods to your customer, add a rental line on the Customer Order for the pallet - set the rental price to $0/day (or whatever deposit/charge model you need)
3. Pick, pack and ship the customer order as normal - pick the specific serialized pallet on the rental line
4. Start the rental
5. When the customer returns the pallet, initiate the return from the Manage Rentals page... this creates an RMA automatically
6. Receive the pallet back via Register Arrival ("Receive Parts against Order Deliveries")
7. The rental period can end automatically when the parts are received if you define a rental end date on the return line

What this gives you:

• Full serial-level visibility of every pallet: where it is, who has it, how long they've had it
• A formal return process through RMA and Register Arrival
• Tracking and reporting via the Rental Workbench, Manage Rentals, and Rental Assets Availability pages
• Rental Events History for a full audit trail
• If needed, you can even trigger demobilization work orders automatically using Mobilization Codes on the sales part

This approach uses standard IFS functionality with no customisation required. I've used it successfully in production and it covers the full lifecycle your customer is asking about.

Hope that helps!

-jason