Navision Stock across 5 Countries/Companies

Hi,

We need to run navision with 5 Companies in different countries. Each company needs to have a view of stock available in the other countries, does anyone know the best option in setting navision up, to allow reliable stock updates?

We were thinking whether it is possible to have a common stock system, or whether it’s possible to run a a MSSQL DTS script to update the stock tables of each company.

Simon

Will they all be on the same server (say with Citrix), or seperate servers in each country?

You don’t give all information about your problem so I will try to guess some parts. [:)] I don’t know how you will maintain stock from other countries in current Navision company. You can have a warehouse location and each bin is a country or each country is a warehouse location or a similar technique.

You can export inventory information from Navision using DTS. You can export total inventory for each product, all ledger entries, etc. Details of data depends your current business requirements.

When you import it in Navision you must import data to ledger entries. Importing data directly to ledger entries it’s not recommended. The correct way it’s using journals. So you can’t use DTS to import directly to Navision. You can import to a temporary table using DTS and later run a Navision codeunit, report, etc to post temporary table using a journal.

If you are maintaining an extra table for holding inventory information from other companies you might use DTS since it doesn’t change ledger entries.

Inserting external stock information with same item No. in item ledger entries you will have some challenges related to costing but you I guess out of this thread right know.

All countries will be on the same set of servers, i.e. a central MSSQL DB Cluster, and load balanced app servers, running citrix.

Thanks for that nuno, that’s quite useful.

Simon

You are using all DB’s in same server Linked Object you could also use linked object tables between DB’s. I never tied this option but “in theory" it will work. Probably another member can confirm that option

I have been using Linked Objects to views in Navison for many years now, and they are great and easy to use. The problem is that as the number of records grow performance starts to be a problem. And in this case you are going to need tolook at Item Ledger entries, and that is NOT somethign you want to do with linked objects. I would in this case create a new table that stores a snap shot of Inventory on hand for each country’s database, and use and ADO program to update this from a button on the item card.

Thanks this all makes sense.

Hi Simon,

We actually did a similar setup in my previous company. We had one central stock in Europe, where all the different companies in Europe were able to look up the inventory for all global items, and also have the orders generate directly in NAV system there (Local Sales Order → Purchase Order → Global Sales Order).

Is it something like that you are looking for?

That’s exactly what is required, the added complexity is to include a Japanese Version of Navision, which is available from Japan.

Do you have any details on how this was set up?

Hehe - yes we also included the Japanese version! That didn’t make it easier! But the solution we used was designed 5 years ago, and the tools back then was not as easy as they are today. Back then it was actually very complex, but now you can do with some simple web-services - combined with a Biztalk server.

I will post a bit more details about this tomorrow. I need to go home now, but I’ll be back!