Customer Consignment in BC 365

Business Central/NAV
1

What would be best practice for customer consignment in Business Central 365 premium? I searched on this forum and didn’t find anything related to BC Customer Consignment best practices. Can you kindly direct me to where I can read about.

2

Hey Oscar - there are a couple of process related questions I’d like to ask first:

  1. Where is the stock going to be physically located? Within your warehouse, or in a customer’s warehouse?
  2. Who owns the stock - this is important so the cost or value is reflected correctly on your books
  3. How are the transactions handled? Will you do regular inventory and then bill the customer for what they’ve used?

Thanks,
Gino

3

Gino,

  1. The stock for customer consignment is physically located at the customer’s warehouse.
  2. My company retains ownership of the stock until the unit is sold. This is crucial to ensure that the cost or value is accurately reflected on our books.
  3. The transaction process involves several manual steps.

Here’s how it works:

  • The inside sales manager manually creates an invoice using Excel.
  • The manager submits the request to the planning department.
  • Planning then issues an assembly order.
  • Once the assembly is complete, the order is posted, and a notification is sent to the inside sales manager indicating that the unit is ready to be shipped.
  • The logistics department handles the shipment to the customer’s location.
  • The paperwork for the signed shipment is then sent to Inventory Control and Accounting.
  • Inventory Control performs an item reclassification to the customer’s location in BC.
  • Once the unit ships from the Customer Consignment location, the Sales Rep notifies Accounting, and the unit is invoiced.

It’s worth noting that this process is highly manual, and we’re not fully utilizing BC for this specific process because BC does not offer a seamless solution for Customer Consignment. At least that’s my understanding.

Regarding the question of whether regular inventory is conducted and the customer is billed for what they’ve used, the answer is yes. We periodically perform Cycle Counts. However, because of the manual process and no Sales Order is generated for the Customer Consignment, sometimes we have to research where the unit is physically located.

Additionally, I’d appreciate guidance or recommendations on where I can find more information about implementing this Customer Consignment process within my organization. Could you please point me in the right direction for further reading and resources related to this specific process?

Thank you in advance.

4

Hey there Oscar, Thank you for the detailed explanation.

I think the below article gives a great overview of consignment options in BC:

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5

@Gino_Pack I greatly appreciate you taking the time to assist me with this matter. I can not thank you enough. I will run the scenarios with the stakeholders and let you know how it goes. I may not respond right away as we’re working through many other issues. Again, thank you for your help.

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