Our Business Central client would like to view their supplier’s inventory levels and use it in calculating ETA. We would like to do this with as little customization as possible.
Below, “Customer” is the end customer, who our client sells to; “Client” is our customer, who is doing the selling; “Supplier” is the provider of goods to our Client.
The general order/fulfillment flow is: Client takes order from Customer; Client orders goods from Supplier; Supplier ships goods to Client; Client performs break-bulk and fulfills Customer orders.
The Client carries little inventory; returns and popular items may be stocked locally. All other goods are ordered from the Supplier at the time of sale. Client will use Average inventory valuation. Client wants to update Supplier inventory using daily feeds. ETA is estimated at time of order confirmation by the following rough formula, and most of the information is known at the item-location level (e.g. we know for Item X that the Client handling time is Y and Supplier handling time is Z):
Supplier lead time + Supplier pack time + shipping time from Supplier to Client + Client break-bulk/reship time + domestic shipping time estimate from Client to Customer (actually, this last is shipment-specific)
If it weren’t for automatic inventory valuation, I would set this up with locations, location SKUs, and standard facilities within Business Central. “Inventory Value Zero” at a SKU level could also work. As it is, it looks like the only solution is adding custom fields to the Item table for Supplier’s inventory and calculating an ETA.However, with the multitude of settings within Business Central, I have a feeling I am missing some way to configure the system instead of writing a customization.
Anyone have any pointers or ideas?