Inventory

Hello, One of our client is a trading company and they want to manage so called “external” stock. For example: they sell some goods for a customer, make an invoice etc. But the customer doesn’t carry goods. Later, when he does they make a delivery note. My questions are the following: Is there a simple method to manage this “external” stock (eg. stocktaking)? And how can I print this “number two” delivery note. Thanks for any help!

Hi Soya, A manual way of accomplishing this, and it is manual, is to do the following. I have made a few assumptions; I am presuming you do not want to modify the system too much to do this. I am also presuming that the invoice is liable to the customer at the original transaction and NOT when the second delivery note is sent. Simply invoice the customer as usual, and produce the shipping documentation. The shipping documentation should contain a reference to say don’t ship it, instead create an instruction to manually adjust the stock back in - that said for inventory control purposes you want to keep this separate as it cannot be sold - it is already! Use of customer specific locations, or customer specific bins within a “sold” location would be required here. Then when the customer wants the goods you do a positive transfer from the correct location. Accounts wise you are going to have cost implications of bringing the stock back into Navision, so you will need to work around this, the transfer goes to a different location and GL account that is accounted for separately (or something) - but by doing it this way you can control the stock. I am unsure as to the liability here from an accounting perspective, whilst you manage this “external” stock that is sold do you charge handling fees as they are utilising your stock management skills as a consignment warehouse - and in these instances storage space is usually paid for! The second delivery note is tricky, you could open up the shipment date on shipped invoices, and alter it - but very dodgy from an audit perspective, far better, if possible is to produce one from the Negative Item transfer - but this would take some modifying to bring up the correct shipping/customer details from something that is not related to an order. Unsure on this bit as I am not of the development fraternity - and this modification may make it sensible to just modify the whole dam routine. I hope this helps - and I am sure others will contribute with other solutions. Steve

This sounds similar to the application we are currently working on. The client uses a “Bill and Hold” system, where the end user is billed for goods not shipped, and takes title to the goods at billing. We created warehouse locations for each B&H customer. The original order instructs to ship to B&H. When goods are actually made, they are entered into B&H inventory for that “warehouse”. A no charge release later ships from B&H as a drop shipment. Carol