How to Handle Unfulfilled SO Quantities in ERPNext Production Planning

Production planning with partial deliveries is where ERPNext's manufacturing module shows its roughest edges. The "Get Items" button filters Sales Orders by status and pending quantity, but the three fields it relies on — delivered_qty, produced_qty, and planned_qty — can drift out of sync with reality when Work Orders are cancelled, Production Plans are closed without completion, or Stock Entries are amended. I am Manoj, ERP implementation lead at Mith Tech in Bengaluru, and reconciling production planning data after partial deliveries is a weekly task for our manufacturing clients.

Why "Get Items" shows the wrong quantity

The Production Plan's "Get Items from Sales Orders" button runs a query that calculates pending quantity as:

pending_qty = so_item.qty - so_item.delivered_qty - so_item.planned_qty

This formula has three failure modes:

1. planned_qty is stale. When you cancel a Production Plan or close it without completing all Work Orders, planned_qty on the SO Item may not decrement. The system thinks those quantities are still being produced. The next "Get Items" subtracts the stale planned_qty and shows less (or zero) pending quantity.

2. SO status filter excludes valid orders. "Get Items" only considers Sales Orders with status "To Deliver and Bill" or "To Deliver". If a partial payment marked the SO as "To Bill" or a custom workflow moved it to a non-standard status, the order disappears from the query.

3. No active default BOM. Items without a BOM flagged as is_active = 1 and is_default = 1 are silently skipped. This happens when someone creates a new BOM version but forgets to mark it as default, or when a BOM is deactivated during an engineering change.

Visualising the gap

The Fulfillment Gap Calculator breaks down an SO quantity into its components — what has been delivered, what is in production, what can be planned (material available), and what is blocked:

Diagnosing your specific issue

The Production Plan Debugger walks through the five checkpoints. Answer each question about your SO and it will identify which root cause applies to your situation:

The fix — scripts and workflow

The fix depends on the root cause. The recipe below provides three Python scripts: one to query unfulfilled SOs directly (bypassing the UI), one to reconcile planned_qty, and one to check material availability:

# Fetch Sales Orders with unfulfilled quantities
# for production planning in ERPNext v15
# See: GitHub #49819, Forum #163193

import frappe

def get_unfulfilled_so_items(
    company: str,
    from_date: str | None = None,
    item_code: str | None = None,
):
    """Return SO items where qty_to_deliver > 0
    and an active BOM exists for the item."""

    filters = {
        "docstatus": 1,
        "company": company,
        "status": ["not in", ["Completed", "Cancelled", "Closed"]],
    }
    if from_date:
        filters["transaction_date"] = [">=", from_date]

    orders = frappe.get_all(
        "Sales Order",
        filters=filters,
        fields=["name"],
    )

    items = []
    for so in orders:
        so_items = frappe.get_all(
            "Sales Order Item",
            filters={
                "parent": so.name,
                "qty": [">", 0],
            },
            fields=[
                "item_code", "qty", "delivered_qty",
                "produced_qty", "ordered_qty",
            ],
        )
        for item in so_items:
            pending = item.qty - item.delivered_qty
            if pending <= 0:
                continue
            if item_code and item.item_code != item_code:
                continue
            # Check for active BOM
            bom = frappe.db.exists(
                "BOM",
                {"item": item.item_code, "is_active": 1, "is_default": 1},
            )
            if not bom:
                continue
            items.append({
                "sales_order": so.name,
                "item_code": item.item_code,
                "so_qty": item.qty,
                "delivered_qty": item.delivered_qty,
                "produced_qty": item.produced_qty,
                "pending_qty": pending,
                "bom": bom,
            })

    return items

The production planning workflow — with failure points

The visual flow below shows the complete path from Sales Order to Delivery, with the specific failure points that cause production planning issues:

What to know before you commit

Run reconciliation during off-hours. The reconcile_planned_qty script updates SO Item records directly. On a system with 500+ open SOs, this takes 2–5 minutes and briefly locks each SO record. Run it during non-business hours to avoid conflicts with users creating orders.

Reconciliation is safe to repeat. The script recalculates from the source of truth (submitted Production Plan Items), so running it multiple times produces the same result. Add it to a daily scheduled job if planned_qty drift is a recurring issue.

Material availability is point-in-time. The check_material_availability function reads current stock. Between the check and Work Order creation, stock may change (other Production Plans, Purchase Receipts, Stock Entries). For accurate planning, run the check immediately before creating Work Orders.

Multi-level BOMs. The scripts above handle single-level BOMs. For multi-level (sub-assembly) BOMs, ERPNext's "Get Sub Assembly Items" button in the Production Plan handles the explosion. The planned_qty reconciliation still applies — the issue is at the top-level SO Item, not the sub-assembly level.

Production planning with partial deliveries breaks when planned_qty drifts out of sync — and it drifts every time a Production Plan is cancelled, closed, or amended without completing all Work Orders. The reconciliation script above fixes the data. Run it once to clean up, then add it as a daily scheduled job if the drift recurs. The Fulfillment Gap Calculator and Production Plan Debugger help you diagnose before you script.