Originally Posted 9/12/2012
(The attached video includes most of the information in the text below for those of you who prefer to “watch it” rather than “read it.”)
Today we’re going to look at the Microsoft Dynamics GP Inventory Control module. We will look at how to assign all items to a specific site or a range of items to a specific site. This feature has been included in Dynamics GP for a long time, but it’s a feature that many users don’t know about or have forgotten about.
Opening the Site Maintenance window, which is under Inventory and Cards, allows you to create a new site or make changes to an existing site such as the address, phone information, tax schedules and the department segment of the General Ledger Chart of Accounts that is assigned to the site.
In the bottom right corner of the Site Maintenance window is an Assign button. Once you pull up a site and click on this button, you have the ability to assign items to the selected site. You can leave it set to “all”; or select a single item (or range of items) based on Item Number, and/or Generic Description, and/or Class ID, and/or Vendor ID; then simply click OK.
Mass assigning is great, but once a site is assigned to an item and has been used, it is difficult to remove the relationship between the item and the site. Also if a site is no longer used, you cannot remove it.
Other Site Maintenance Window Options
(The following is not included on the video.)
To the left of the Assign button on the Site Maintenance window are two other buttons: the Bins button and the Planning button.
The Bins button allows you to specify which bins will be the default bins for different types of item transactions. You can change the bin at the time of entry, and you can change the defaults at any time. If you use bins, setting up these defaults can save you a lot of time.
If you use Resource Planning for your inventory, the Planning button allows you to enter default information for sites and item-site combinations. Once you’ve entered default information for a site in this window, you can change the information of each item-site combination.
At a recent Partner Technical Event, we learned about many of the new features to be released. Below is a picture of another New York City Partner, Anne-Claire McAllister, and an independent GP and CRM consultant, Vilas Wibhandik. Both Anne-Clair and Vilas are very good friends of mine, and we had a wonderful time learning and growing our skill sets.
GREAT CHANGES TO GP 2013
There are two great improvements with the upcoming release of GP 2013 regarding inventory sites:
- Inactivating Sites
- Inactivating relationships between sites and items
Inactivating Sites
This great new feature enables you to inactivate a site that is no longer used. We have not, and will not, be able to delete a site that has been used. This restriction protects the integrity of the history. But with the release of Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013, we will be able to inactivate a site, preventing us from using the site from within Inventory Control, Purchase Order Processing and Sales Order Processing.
Inactivating Relationships Between Sites and Items
This is an even more powerful feature of GP 2013! We can now inactivate the relationship between a site and an item. Imagine you have an inventory site that is still active, but you no longer store your item “WidgetABC” at that site. You can inactivate the site for this item, and your users will be forced to use another site for receiving, fulfilling orders and inventory adjustments. Should you choose to once again store your “WidgetABC” at the inactive site, you only need to unmark the “Inactive” box and begin use again.
There are more than 150 new features already in Microsoft Dynamics GP due at the end of calendar year 2012. If you are an Inventory Control user, this upgrade is a must. You can see the new features highlighted above in the video above.
Belinda Allen, Microsoft MVP Business Solutions 