Inventory Journal - Ghost Bin locations

rico1931

Hi Everyone,

So we've been moving some products around in the shop and changing Bin locations for a ton of items. Well today was the day we ran the Phys. Inventory Journal after moving things around and using the Item Reclass. Journal to move product from one bin to another and the Phys. Inventory Journal is still reporting the previous Bin! So each item now has multiple bin locations in the Journal!!! This is truly going to confuse people...

I checked the Bin Content table and there is nothing to identity the product with the previous Bin location. It must be reading all the information from the Item Ledgers Entry table. Is there any way we can make the Journal only read from the Bin content table vs the Items ledger entry table? Or any filter I can set to get rid of the ghost bins?

Thanks everyone. This problem has driven me mad!

rico1931

Anyone able to see the same thing? I was able to replicate the problem in CRONUS so I'm wondering what do people usually do in this situation for inventory counts?

rico1931

I'm going to take a guess here and say that no one has had this issue with the Phys. Inventory Journal?

rico1931

small little bump.

rico1931

another bump.. I find it hard no one else has come across the issue.

Alex_Chow

A couple of questions:

1. Why are you using the Phys. Invt. Journal when you have WMS enabled?
2. Why are you using Item Reclass Journal when you have WMS enabled?
3. What type of warehouse settings have you enabled for the location?

jglathe

Hi Rico,

rico1931 wrote:

It must be reading all the information from the Item Ledgers Entry table. Is there any way we can make the Journal only read from the Bin content table vs the Items ledger entry table? Or any filter I can set to get rid of the ghost bins?

Yes it does. And if you have the "Item not in Stock" option set, it will create a phys. inventory line. When the bin no longer exists, you get a line only with the location (and calculated qty. 0). What happens when you run this without the "Item not in stock" option? AFAICR, this should do away with ghost bins.
BTW: Operating the phys. inventory journal with bins is tedious and dangerous at best. To make it halfway real-world safe you need to add some curbs, like setting InsertAllowed to no, and getting used to run the "Calculate Inventory" job to add a line for an item suddenly found in a different bin.
If you need to do away with ghost bins and only want to allow actually existing bins, you need to dive into the report logic of "Calculate Invetory". But this is something for an experienced developer only.

with best regards

Jens

rico1931

Alex Chow wrote:

A couple of questions:

1. Why are you using the Phys. Invt. Journal when you have WMS enabled?
2. Why are you using Item Reclass Journal when you have WMS enabled?
3. What type of warehouse settings have you enabled for the location?

Thanks for the reply!

1. What are my other options? We do have Warehouse enabled but def don't use it to the fullest extent. We only use it for Bin Mandatory and fixed Bins - Phys Invt Journal seemed the easiest for the users to use during our inventory. When we first started we were only doing Inventory adjustments via the Item Journal and that is even more dangerous.

2. WMS means warehouse mgmt system right? We do have that module, but again don't use it for pick/put-away. Only for Bins... Are there other options? We are debating if we should just get rid of the warehouse module so we stop paying for it yearly...

3. We only have Bin Mandatory checked, everything else is unchecked and Default Bin Selection is Fixed Bin. We only have 2 "locations" and one in transit location.

Again thanks for the reply and looking forward to your help!

rico1931

jglathe wrote:

Hi Rico,

rico1931 wrote:

It must be reading all the information from the Item Ledgers Entry table. Is there any way we can make the Journal only read from the Bin content table vs the Items ledger entry table? Or any filter I can set to get rid of the ghost bins?

Yes it does. And if you have the "Item not in Stock" option set, it will create a phys. inventory line. When the bin no longer exists, you get a line only with the location (and calculated qty. 0). What happens when you run this without the "Item not in stock" option? AFAICR, this should do away with ghost bins.
BTW: Operating the phys. inventory journal with bins is tedious and dangerous at best. To make it halfway real-world safe you need to add some curbs, like setting InsertAllowed to no, and getting used to run the "Calculate Inventory" job to add a line for an item suddenly found in a different bin.
If you need to do away with ghost bins and only want to allow actually existing bins, you need to dive into the report logic of "Calculate Invetory". But this is something for an experienced developer only.

with best regards

Jens

Thanks for the answer!

Users always run the report with Items not on Inventory because they want to make sure they account for the Zero inventory items in case they missed something. They don't want to run the report without this check marked.

Their process is going to the Phys Inventory Journal, Clicking "Calculate Inventory" enter Posting Date, Doc number, checking Items Not on Inventory and entering the Filter to limit totals to the location and Bin aka our row number.

When they try to insert a new line into the Calculated inventory list it throws them an error so they can't do that. But we are in the process to move to NAV 2013 from NAV 2009 R2 and don't want to mess with any code units at this time during conversion... but am guessing that it may be the we have to go unless someone can recommend a better process or way of doing inventory? I've tried looking online and reading all the forum post about inventory but can't find a "good" way of doing it for us. Oh and we do cycle counting so we do use the Phys Invt Counting Period Code as another filter.

Thanks!

rico1931

bump

rico1931

bump.... now we are on NAV 2013 R2 and still getting the same issues ](*,)

jglathe

Hi Rico,

not much has changed in this part of the functionality from NAV2009R2 to 2013R2. It has been reworked, though... but not the bin logic. With Bin Mandatory enabled, Report 790 "Calculate Inventory" actually goes over all warehouse entries for this item and location. Meaning, the true source of the calculated inventory are the warehouse entries in this case. And if "Zero Quantity" is enabled, for all bins an item ever has been in, a journal line in the phys. inventory journal will be created. I know, this can be a PITA.

A way to mitigate this would be to change Report 790 with the following rule:

- If a bin is empty on physical inventory, and it is not the default bin for this item and location, then don't create the line in physical inventory.
- If a bin code is explicitly given (also item and location), then create the line even if the calculated inventory is zero.

Additionally, prohibit line creation in the physical inventory form (page) to make sure that new lines are only created with this report.

This should do away with many of the practical issues of using physical inventory.

with best regards

Jens