physical inventory and item tracking

buchhot

Hi you NAV-Gurus!

We want to implement item tracking in our warehouse.
I see no problem in all of the transaction types (purchase, transfer between locations, shipping, service, ...) except the physical inventory.

For example:
We have Item A which is item tracked (serial number).
The system tells we have 5000 pcs.
In fact our warehouse people say we just have 4997, so there are three pieces missing.
According to NAV we have to tell NAV which three items are missing.
How should we do that?
Shouldn't it go the other way round (scan the entire stock and and adjust the missing serial numbers to stock 0)?

Anybody got an idea or ever had a customer with item tracking in NAV.

I have ideas but this is all about customization (scan entire stock, find missing entries and give serial nos to physical inventory journal).

If you have any ideas how to solve it easily I would really appreciate.

Many thanks in advance and
best wishes from Austria

Thomas

AdamRoue

With your 5000 and 4997 example what you have to do is go through the 4997 and record the serial numbers, then analyse NAV and find which 3 are missing, then define these in the item tracking lines. In essence no matter what system you have to retain any integrity in the tracking you HAVE to compare the existing 5000 records to the 4997 in stock to find the missing 3, you cannot randomly take three out This is an unfortunate and necessary overhead of serial number control. That said once the warehouse staff understand what they have to do to correct missing stock it is amazing how the occurences reduce and the stock accuracy increases. In teh past I have always left this as standard to improve processing and accuracy.

buchhot

Hi AdamRoue!

Thanks for the fast reply!
Sure, I totally agree and it is totaly clear that I have to find out the missing pieces by scanning the entire stock (as I wrote in my first post).
As we have XML-files per box we can import the files (customization) for still closed boxes, so we just have to scan the open boxes and so miinimize the effort.
My question was "how is a customer supposed to do a physical inventory with item tracking and no customizations".
But I think the answer is, that it is practically not possible without customization.

I also think (and hope) that stock accuracy will increase and that not that much pieces should be missing while doing physical inventory.

kind regards
Thomas

jreynolds

I have done a lot of work with lot tracked items and the physical inventory journal. You are correct - it is absolutely worthless without modifications.

buchhot

Yeah, well then I will start making concept and code what we need.

MatthewRBritton

Hi,

We are implementing Nav 5.01 at the moment, and all of our inventory is lot tracked (no serial numbers though).

What are the issues you see with the Physical Inventory Journal? Do they relate to Lot tracking or Serial number tracking?

From what I have looked at, you use the functon 'Calculate Inventory' for Item A (in your example) then enter the stock that you DO have. Nav takes care of the rest. I guess this is more difficult with serial numbers because you will have 4997 serial numbers where I may have only 20 lot numbers to enter. Still, if you scan all your inventory into the journal, Nav will identify the missing serial numbers?

Cheers

Matt

jreynolds

The first problem is that the “Calculate Inventory” function will not produce any information about current inventory balances by lot, yet it is necessary to specify the adjustment by lot. The second problem is that the item tracking information only cares about the quantity of the adjustment, not the calculated and actual quantities.

Suppose for an item you have two lots A and B with a calculated inventory of 12 for lot A and 8 for lot B. Calculate Inventory will calculate a total of 20 for the item and generate a journal line with a calculated quantity of 20. No information is created to indicate how this quantity (20) breaks down by lot. Suppose further that the actual inventory for lot A is 10 and for lot B it is 9. This gives a total for the item of 19. It is this number that needs to be entered into the physical journal. When you enter this, the item journal line becomes a negative adjustment of 1 (calculated 20, actual 19). Now, because the item is lot tracked it is necessary to enter the item tracking associated with this negative adjustment. However, the item tracking information is only concerned with the quantity on the item journal line and this quantity is 1 (the quantity of the negative adjustment). The item tracking data has no facility for dealing with calculated quantities and actual quantities. The system, by the way, provides no assistance in determining the lot by lot adjustments; you must use some other process to calculate the inventory quantities by lot and to compare these calculated balances to the actual quantities by lot. In our example, there needs to be tracking information entered for each lot because each lot needs to be adjusted. Unfortunately you cannot enter signed numbers in the item tracking information; you are only allowed to enter positive numbers and the sign of the number is determined from the type of the item journal transaction (i.e. positive or negative adjustment). So you are stuck. The only way I can figure out how to do this is to make two passes at the physical journal; one where enter the lots that have a positive adjustment and a second pass where you enter the lots that have a negative adjustment.

One additional problem, even if you go to all this trouble, is that the physical inventory ledger does not carry any tracking information.

MatthewRBritton

After some checking, I have found that the Phys. Inventory journal contains some mods. made by our Navsion partner, which allow the 'Calculate Inventory' to show the inventory by lot number in the journal.

This explains the differences we are seeing.

Sorry about the confusion.