Turn off Lot Specific Tracking

lloydf

We have a Navision 3.7 client who currently use an Item Tracking code with Lot Specific Tracking turned on for all their stock items.
Due to a change in their business process they wish to turn Lot Specific Tracking OFF.However when we attempt to do this we get an error "Entries Exist for Item 1010025. The field Lot Specific Tracking cannot be changed." We understand that this error occurs because entries already exist within the system for their stock items.
We could programatically circumvent this validation however we are reluctant to do so as we do not know what the repercussions would be to the wider system.
Could you please advise us as to the most appropriate way to turn Lot Specific Tracking OFF where Lot Nos have been assigned to these items or if there would be any ramiffications to curcumventing the validation in code.

Thank You in advance

kine

You need to do a choice:
1) Create new item cards (or renumber old and create new one) and transfer the open entries through item journal from one item to the new card without tracking (problem is that you need to have all purchases etc. invoiced to have correct costing)

2) You can try to band the standard and remove the code by C/AL code, but you need to test what else you all need to do to be able to use the items correctly.

nunomaia

kine wrote:

You need to do a choice:
1) Create new item cards (or renumber old and create new one) and transfer the open entries through item journal from one item to the new card without tracking (problem is that you need to have all purchases etc. invoiced to have correct costing)

2) You can try to band the standard and remove the code by C/AL code, but you need to test what else you all need to do to be able to use the items correctly.

I always preferred to use first option, since it’s the safest one.

kine

nunomaia wrote:

kine wrote:

You need to do a choice:
1) Create new item cards (or renumber old and create new one) and transfer the open entries through item journal from one item to the new card without tracking (problem is that you need to have all purchases etc. invoiced to have correct costing)

2) You can try to band the standard and remove the code by C/AL code, but you need to test what else you all need to do to be able to use the items correctly.

I always preferred to use first option, since it’s the safest one.

Exactly, I recommend this option too... second one must be connected with good analysis and testing and know-how...

David_Singleton

I think also there is a question of customer satisfaction. I have always gone route 2/. Simply because customers I have worked with have not been able to work with the massive interruption involved in option 1/. Having to retrain people on part numbers, the closing of all open orders, and just the mess resulting from now having a doubled inventory is in many cases just not worth it.

Of course the key here is skill sets, but why is that an issue? Today it is not like ten years ago, when companies relied only on in house resources. These days it is very common to outsource specialist tasks to those that have the experience.

Of course my view is different, since I get called in when there are these complex tasks to be done, so what I see is always the more complex needs. And in those cases the cost of bringing in an expert is generally a lot cheaper than the cost caused by the interruption of business.

nunomaia

David Singleton wrote:

I think also there is a question of customer satisfaction. I have always gone route 2/. Simply because customers I have worked with have not been able to work with the massive interruption involved in option 1/. Having to retrain people on part numbers, the closing of all open orders, and just the mess resulting from now having a doubled inventory is in many cases just not worth it.

Of course the key here is skill sets, but why is that an issue? Today it is not like ten years ago, when companies relied only on in house resources. These days it is very common to outsource specialist tasks to those that have the experience.

Of course my view is different, since I get called in when there are these complex tasks to be done, so what I see is always the more complex needs. And in those cases the cost of bringing in an expert is generally a lot cheaper than the cost caused by the interruption of business.

Related to business interruption can be relative.
When I made such thing has build a report that made all the tasks.
Then has setup to run at night and it took about 4 hours to run and users never suffered from interruption. In large databases can be also setup to run a few items per day.

Going to all tables it’s a lot faster. The biggest issue is that users rely only in Navigate function to find out tables to change and that is complete wrong. I liked your by statement by following this way is better be done by an specialist.

lloydf

Thank you all for your feedback. This certainly has raised some interesting discussion!
In hindsight Kine's first option seems to me the most appropriate. Despite the effort and possible disruption, we are not interfering with the core Navision functionality. If we programatically intervene the likelyhood is that in the future the client will wish to revert to standard lot tracking and we will have to reverse out these changes.

David_Singleton

lloydf wrote:

Thank you all for your feedback. This certainly has raised some interesting discussion!
In hindsight Kine's first option seems to me the most appropriate. Despite the effort and possible disruption, we are not interfering with the core Navision functionality. If we programatically intervene the likelyhood is that in the future the client will wish to revert to standard lot tracking and we will have to reverse out these changes.

Absolutely if the client has no issues working with new part numbers, then by far this is the safest way.

lloydf

An issue I have considered with the creation of new stock items and the renaming of old items is that the association of stock items to historical transactions wll be broken as those historical transactions will be updated with the renamed item number.
Is there any way around this so that effectively the newly created stock items would simply continue the association based on the Item No?

David_Singleton

lloydf wrote:

An issue I have considered with the creation of new stock items and the renaming of old items is that the association of stock items to historical transactions wll be broken as those historical transactions will be updated with the renamed item number.
Is there any way around this so that effectively the newly created stock items would simply continue the association based on the Item No?

This is the reason I normally go for option 2. and is what I was stating above.

Renaming wont work because then you have the same issue that the lots will then just reattach to the newly renamed items.

Like I said this si not as simple an issue as it first seems, if you have not done it before, then seriously consider the amount of analysis work involved just in understanding the issue.

nunomaia

lloydf wrote:

An issue I have considered with the creation of new stock items and the renaming of old items is that the association of stock items to historical transactions wll be broken as those historical transactions will be updated with the renamed item number.
Is there any way around this so that effectively the newly created stock items would simply continue the association based on the Item No?

This is the downside of going by this version.
You must know all the tables by going to other version.

lloydf

This goes back to my original question. What are the ramifications if we go with the c/side option. Clearly an onerous task to investigate!

nunomaia

lloydf wrote:

This goes back to my original question. What are the ramifications if we go with the c/side option. Clearly an onerous task to investigate!

1. You must confirm invoices related to tracking. In my current country isn’t legal to print a invoice with item tracking and a few months later to print same invoice again without item tracking. You must check it.
2 . Regarding to tables if you never done such thing I advice you go to every table and check for item tracking. Avoid having unposted orders and such things during this process.