Counting Inventory in Business Central: Faster Counts, Fewer Errors

Introduction

Good morning or afternoon, everyone. This is Mark, and today we’re going to talk about how to do inventory counts in Business Central. Everybody’s favorite thing to do is go out and count inventory and somehow get that information back into BC, so we’ll talk about some of the ways you can do that and maybe how you can improve it for yourself.

What we’re going to do today is go briefly through a short presentation and then jump in and look at the different options you have for inventory counts. We think the Advanced Inventory Count is the way you want to go, but we’ll also talk about the other options that are part of BC, which may be suitable for you.

About Us

Just briefly about who we are: we’ve been around for about 10 years now, with tons of apps in the manufacturing, distribution, and warehousing side of things, as well as retail. For counter sales, and really any time you need to touch or do something with physical inventory, that’s when we can likely help, whether it’s production scheduling, warehouse management, shipping, counter sales, and all those sorts of things.

I won’t go through all the details, but pretty much everything we do here, we do through our partners. If you have questions, want to try something out, or want pricing, we do publish some price guidelines on our website, but your partner will be able to give you quotes on the cost of any software we offer.

I mentioned we’ve been around for about 10 years. The Advanced Inventory Count, which we’ll look at later in the session, has actually been around for 16 or 17 years now at least. It was written way back in the NAV days. It’s a very powerful tool that’s used by thousands of people. Some people are doing daily cycle counts, and some people just use it for their full physical count at the end of the year. In any case, lots of people use it. It’s been around a long time and is a well-proven tool.

Free Applications

Out of that big stack of applications we have, a number are free. I’ll cover these off quickly and then we’ll jump into inventory counts.

If you’re manufacturing, or if you need to do purchasing for a warehouse, the Enhanced Planning Worksheet is much better than the standard Business Central requisition worksheet. For warehousing, it does a much better job of purchase planning than the standard Business Central tools, which are almost unusable. This will really help you automate your purchasing for distribution environments.

The Enhanced Forecasting Worksheet is for sales forecasting. We also have some more technical tools for setting up your environment. We have a webinar on the Import-Export Power Tool next week, covering how to quickly and easily get data into BC when you’re converting or managing data.

There are a few other things I won’t get into in detail, including drag-and-drop scheduling and drag-and-drop document management, as well as shipping. If you do domestic parcel shipping, the shipping app lets you get shipping labels, tracking numbers, and costs right from within Business Central. The shipping costs cost you something, but the app itself doesn’t cost you anything. You plug it in, and 10 minutes later you can generate your shipping labels. We do have a more advanced shipping solution, but if you just do domestic parcel and want to ship from sales, this is the one.

WMS Express is one I’m going to show you a little later in the session, because you can use it with the inventory counting. It’s free warehouse management, so if you just need to do the basics in your warehouse, like receiving, picking, shipping, inventory counts, or bin-to-bin movements, that’s WMS Express. If all you care about is inventory counts, you grab WMS Express and you can do your counts with handheld devices. You don’t even need barcodes on your product to use it: we can scan text-based part numbers, bin codes, or whatever you have, or you can do manual entry, all on a handheld device.

Ways to Count in Business Central

There are a couple of built-in ways to do counting in Business Central, plus a third way, technically.

Physical Inventory Journal

The Physical Inventory Journal has been around since day one and is very basic. You can create batches and build your list of items to count. It does support cycle counting as well: using the built-in fields on stockkeeping units and item cards, you can do cycle counting, but it’s quite limited. You can also use it with WMS Express, so if you don’t want to buy the Advanced Inventory Count, you can use the Physical Inventory Journal with handheld devices for free.

The limitations are real, though. It doesn’t do anything automatic with item tracking, serial numbers, lot numbers, or package numbers. It doesn’t handle those at all. It also doesn’t work well if you don’t have bins enabled. If you have a product in only one place in your facility at a time, it’s fine. If you have multiple people counting and they might count the same product in different areas of the warehouse or shop, it’s not really that good. It’s quite limited, but it’s there. Honestly, this is what most people are probably using in Business Central if they haven’t bought something else.

Physical Inventory Order

Maybe five years ago or longer, Microsoft came out with the physical inventory order capability, which is an improvement over the Physical Inventory Journal. It allows you to create your count, the physical inventory order, and then create what they call recordings, which let you go out with count sheets that you enter information into to fill up your order.

It has basic serial number and lot number reconciliation, but it’s very basic and very easy to break. It helps, but it doesn’t really solve the full problem of reconciling your lot numbers and serial numbers. It does have the ability to split one count into multiple recordings to support a multi-person count much better than the Physical Inventory Journal.

These built-in tools work best if you have bins mandatory and no tracking, or if you do have item tracking such as lot and serial numbers but those are warehouse-enabled, so you have serial number or lot number warehouse tracking turned on and you know which bin a lot or serial number is in. They also work well if you have a location with no bins and those items are only in a single spot.

So if your Business Central is set up one of these ways, technically three things: bins mandatory with no item tracking, bins mandatory with warehouse-enabled item tracking, or no bins, the base Business Central tools might be good enough for you. You might be able to use them with no problem.

Native Apps on Devices

One quick note: the Physical Inventory Journal has a native app on the devices, like in WMS Express, to use it there. For physical inventory recording, you can use that with Warehouse Insight. It doesn’t ship by default as a native app in Warehouse Insight, but you can add the physical inventory recording to Warehouse Insight if you like, and that would let you use the base Business Central counting capabilities on the devices.

Warehouse Physical Inventory Journal

The third way I mentioned is the Warehouse Physical Inventory Journal. If you have advanced warehousing turned on, which is directed put-away and pick, then you’re also required to use the Warehouse Physical Inventory Journal. That’s a pain, because now you have an extra thing to deal with, but the same concepts apply as the Physical Inventory Journal. It’s just a separate journal you have to use for a warehouse that transfers to the item journal. It makes everything worse: with directed put-away and pick on, you’re in a worse situation because you have two journals to deal with, the item journal and the Warehouse Physical Inventory Journal.

Why Advanced Inventory Count

What you really want for counting inventory, whether it’s cycle counts or full counts at the end of the year, is the Advanced Inventory Count. This was built the way I would want to count inventory. Everybody hates inventory counts. There are a few people out there who love them, but most people don’t, so the goal of this is to make counts easier to do, easier to reconcile, and to get you out of there faster. You’re not sitting there until three in the morning figuring out which serial number is missing.

The idea behind it is to make it very flexible. You can organize your inventory count any way you like, and you can pre-plan how you’ve organized it. You don’t have to generate your batch on the day of the count. It works with any location configuration: we don’t care if you have bins, no bins, or directed put-away and pick. When you have advanced warehousing turned on, we don’t care, because you’re just using what we call a count sheet. We don’t care what configuration you have on the back end; we deal with that when you go to do your posting and reconciliation.

Predefined or Blank Counts

With predefined item counts, we can generate a count and say, “Joe, go count all these items we’ve identified,” whether that’s an aisle, all these bins, or specific items. Or you can hand someone a blank sheet, whether electronic on a handheld device or a blank sheet of paper, and say, “Count everything you find and let me know what’s out there,” and then that gets entered into the system. Ideally, for those undefined counts, you’re using a scanner, because you just beep all the way through the warehouse. When you come back, it tells you whether what you found matches what Business Central expected and tells you what to do about it.

Multi-User, Reconciliation, and Recounts

You can do multi-user paper-based or scanner-based counts. For paper-based counts, you print out the count sheets and it works great. You can have as many count sheets as you like, with multiple people counting and manual data entry after the fact. With multi-user data entry, it’s not just one person editing a single batch; multiple people can do the data entry. The scanners are great, but if you can’t use them, we have the tools to address that.

Reconciliation is much better: it tells you which lot numbers and serial numbers need adjusting, and it does those adjustments for you. For recounts, the typical thing is you do a count, you’re missing a bunch of stuff, and you grab Excel or the sheets and a highlighter, mark it all up, and hand it off for someone to double-check. We can save that highlighter budget and your time, because we can do automatic recounts. You can say, “Anything that’s out by more than 10 percent, flag it as a recount and add it to a new count sheet,” and now you have a list of items for people to double-check, with an audit trail. That’s also great if auditors come in and want to do spot checks: you create a quick recount on that line, it generates a new sheet, and you have your audit trail to validate it.

There’s posting validation as well. The worst thing about journals, and it’s gotten a little better in BC, is that you go to post 5,000 lines, it gets to line 4,900, and gives you an error message. After waiting 10 minutes, you fix line 4,900, post again, and 10 minutes later line 4,901 has an error. That’s painful. We address that by identifying what won’t post before you hit the post button, which saves you time.

Barcoding Options

Even if you don’t use WMS Express and Warehouse Insight on a handheld device, you can just use Business Central. You can have a laptop or tablet out there and, with a cheap keyboard-wedge scanner, scan barcodes into the count sheet. There are some limitations because it’s technically not designed for that, but it works just fine in a lot of situations.

So the first two options are effectively free from a software perspective. With WMS Express, you’d have to buy scanners or use cell phones and the cell phone camera. I wouldn’t really recommend the cell phone camera; it kind of struggles, because you have to aim it carefully, whereas a device with built-in scanning is just point and it’s instant. Warehouse Insight does a lot more, because it’s the full WMS and the paid version, and it’ll do inventory counts as well.

You don’t actually need barcodes to use these tools. If you have boxes with the item number on them, or labels printed on the racking, I can scan that human-readable item number without needing a barcode, and it scans as quickly as a barcode. So there’s very little barrier to entry to using these mobile devices for your counts, and it can dramatically reduce the amount of time you spend counting. Specifically, if you have lot and serial numbers, you can scan those in and validate them up front, rather than running through the warehouse to find out which ones were missing after a reconciliation error.

Demo: Physical Inventory Journal

Let’s look at the software. If you have questions, put them in the question box in the GoToWebinar panel and I’ll do my best to answer them as we go. We’ll keep it informal. I have no script, so I’m just going to jump in and show what comes to mind. If you’re looking for scanners, our website is the best place to go. We can supply those scanners, set them up for you, and show you how to scan text instead of barcodes.

I’ll start with the standard Physical Inventory Journal. The Warehouse Physical Inventory Journal I won’t really cover unless there are questions; that’s only if you have directed put-away and pick turned on. If you don’t have that on, you’ll use the Physical Inventory Journal to do your count.

You can have as many batches as you want. If you’re doing a multi-person count, counting different parts of the warehouse, you can generate a batch for those bin locations. It’s not quite that simple, but you can have different batches for different people, items, or areas of the warehouse. I’ll use the default batch here.

When you generate it, the Physical Inventory Journal requires you to tell people what to go count, because it’s intended for paper-based counts. You either calculate inventory or calculate the counting period. The counting period is for cycle counting, which I’ll show in a moment, because we also make use of it in the Advanced Inventory Count if you want.

If I calculate inventory, you set your work date, the document number comes in based on the number series, and you have a couple of options. These are newer: you can bring in items that aren’t in inventory, so if you have zero stock of an item but still want to validate that, you can bring it in. You can also bring in items without transactions, so if you’ve created new items you want to count, you can do that. This is also what people sometimes use when they go live with BC: you generate a count with all the imported items and do a count to bring your opening balances in. There are filters available too. I’ll run it and it generates a bunch of lines.

In this Silver location, which has bins, it brings in the bin code and what we expect to find out there. At this point you would print out a count sheet. You can decide whether to do a blind count or not, and away you go.

Now, the show item tracking option: some of these items have lot numbers associated with them. The problem is, if you don’t have warehouse lot tracking turned on, the system doesn’t know which lot number is in which bin. A specific lot number could be in three or four different bins. So it only prints the lot numbers once, because if you had 50 lot numbers for an item across two bins, it doesn’t know which lot numbers are in which bin; it would have to repeat all 50 for each bin. It doesn’t actually know what you’re supposed to count for lot numbers. The value is that if you print this out, you can write in by lot number what you found in that particular bin. The standard Business Central report truncates the bin code, so you’d want to go into the layout and fix that.

You print it out, people fill in the information, you come back and type it in. Say I count one out of seven for an item that has lot numbers, so my adjustment is a negative adjustment, not six. If I try to post, it’ll yell at me because there are no lot numbers; I haven’t told it which lot numbers to adjust. The painful part of the Physical Inventory Journal is that you have to figure out which lot numbers are missing, not which ones you counted. If I record the lot number I counted, that’s not what the system wants; it wants to know which lot numbers you didn’t count.

If I generate a count for a location that doesn’t have bins, this is not a great tool to use. If I have items in more than one place in this location, with no bin codes, I have no way to figure that out. If somebody counted three in one spot and two in another, I have to manually combine them, because I can’t add new lines to this list. It looks like I can add a new line, but as soon as I enter a count, it tells me I can’t add new lines. So there are lots of limitations there.

Physical Inventory Ledger Entries and Cycle Counting

There are entries people aren’t aware of. Physical inventory ledger entries are separate from your item ledger entries, so you can review all of your count history that’s gone through the Physical Inventory Journal as those physical inventory ledger entries.

For cycle counting, if I look in Business Central at the warehouse, the last physical inventory date, the next counting period, and the start and end are all derived from those physical inventory ledger entries. If I look at the last physical inventory date, it opens up the physical inventory ledger entries. Note that when you’re doing directed put-away and pick, it doesn’t actually set any of this, so that’s a challenge. But the point is, those physical inventory ledger entries drive the cycle counting.

If you’re doing cycle counting, you can set your physical inventory count period code, like fast, medium, or slow, which is your ABC code. Based on that, it tells you how many times a year you need to count an item and gives you the range of dates to count it in. You set your ABC code and physical inventory count period code, it calculates when you need to count, and then the Physical Inventory Journal or physical inventory orders can be restricted to the count period code so it only brings in the items you need to count in that period. Once you’ve counted, you update and push it over to the next period.

Demo: Physical Inventory Orders

Let’s talk about physical inventory orders. I’ve got one created for the Silver location. The idea is similar, but this one is a little more robust. You can set a posting date, flag it as open or finished, give it a user ID, and do more than you can with a simple batch. The same basic idea applies: I come in and calculate the lines or the counting period. If you’re doing a cycle count, the counting period brings in the items that need to be in the current period as defined by my header dates.

This also has the ability to filter by bin. The Physical Inventory Journal doesn’t really let you filter by bin, but this lets me restrict to a certain set of bin codes rather than a certain set of items. So from a bin perspective, that’s how you can track what you’re counting, and all of it goes into the posted historical data, including which bins you’ve counted.

I’ve already calculated the lines, and this tells us what we need to count. From here, you don’t enter the count information directly; this is like your baseline sheet or master count document. Instead, you create a new recording. That creates a sheet you can filter down to specific items or bins that are on the physical inventory order. For example, if I only want to record anything in a bin ending in 01, I can do that, and it creates a new physical inventory recording. I can then look at all the recordings: the first might have items for one set of bins, and another for a different set of bins. So you’re working off the same master sheet, the same baseline of everything you can count, and you split it into separate recordings so individuals can record their information.

Technically you don’t have to create a physical inventory order to use recordings, but typically you plan your count with the order and then create recordings. In a recording, I enter what I’ve counted, including lot numbers. The problem is there are several lot numbers within a bin code, so I’d have to manually add them at the bottom. That’s okay, because this does allow you to add lines, unlike the Physical Inventory Journal. You can also import and export this detail if you’re counting in Excel or another system. When I’m done, I record all the lines and finish the recording.

This is one place where I said you could add lines, but there’s a limitation in the base BC tools: there’s no bin content defined for a particular bin, so I’d first have to create that to allow it to post, or the bin code wasn’t on the original physical inventory order, so it won’t let me add it. There are definitely limitations, and it can be a pain to do.

Once finished, you can look at the differences. One weird thing: in the middle of a count, even though I know I’ve recorded information and I want to see the discrepancies, it won’t let me until I flag the whole thing as finished. So I first have to say we’re done, and then it tells me I have an outstanding recording. Once finished, I can look at the discrepancy.

For reconciliation on the item tracking lines, because we don’t have warehouse lot tracking turned on, it doesn’t know which lots are supposed to be in a specific bin. It will tell you what it thinks the discrepancies are, but it’s not very good. If I record lot numbers that are highly unexpected, or lot numbers in different bins, you get errors all over the place when trying to post. You can get into a position where the data you’ve entered simply won’t work, and you have to clear it out, post it, and do a manual adjustment after the fact. Still, this is a big step up from the Physical Inventory Journal.

Demo: Advanced Inventory Count

Now for the best part. We categorize everything as a count, or stocktake, whatever you want to call it. When you create a new count, you give it a description, like “Sample count for Blue,” and specify a location code. The location code is technically optional, because you can have different location codes on the lines, but typically I’m doing a count for one location, so the header includes it.

I specify my “as of” date. I can plan in the future and say I’m doing this count at the end of the month, and it will use this date to determine my expected values. When I actually count, it does all my reconciliation as of this date, even though I generated all the lines a few weeks earlier. So if this is a full count and I start reconciling in July, any reconciliation is based on this date. That also helps with cycle counts, because we’re not actually locking the inventory by default. You can lock it, but otherwise we’re just saying we did the count on this day, and any transactions after that won’t impact the count, because the evaluation is done as of the count date.

At the bottom, you create your count sheets, which are like the physical inventory recordings and like the batches in the Physical Inventory Journal. Say I have a few people counting: Team One, Team Two, and Jimmy, who gets his own sheet. This location doesn’t have bins enabled, but if you wanted to lock the inventory, in other words prevent picks from being created or executed on the bins you’re counting, you can block those bins here. That actually locks the inventory during a cycle count. You don’t have to; the default is disabled, so we’re not locking the inventory or preventing picks, and you can count while you’re live.

Filters and Count Sheet Generation

There are a bunch of filters. This location doesn’t have bins, but I can filter by shelf number if I have stockkeeping units, or by the physical inventory count period code, item number, and similar fields. There’s a whole set of top-level filters to restrict what’s on each count sheet, or I can do a custom filter on anything on the item table, including custom fields. For fun, I’ll filter for anything starting with one, two through five, and six onwards. Normally you do it by bin code, item number, or whatever filters you want, and then generate count sheets.

There are several options when generating. The first one you’d always turn on, because it includes anything you have inventory for, based on the “as of” date on the count header. The empty bins activity period is handy if you have bins enabled: if I set one day, it includes empty bins that have been empty for a day or less. This location doesn’t have bins, so it won’t do anything here.

Active items says: I don’t have inventory, but I’ve had a transaction on that item within a set period, and I want it on my count sheet so I can verify I really have zero in stock. Typically you might set that to a week. Because of how much data I have, I’ll set it to about five years. Inactive items is similar to what we saw in the Physical Inventory Journal: if you have new items that have never had a transaction, you can include those on the count sheet.

Cycle Count Options

For cycle counts, there are a few options. First, I can work with the standard Business Central capability and use the physical inventory count period code, your ABC classification, to count only my fast items, and use the next count period. That does the same thing Business Central does: it brings in the items flagged to be counted a certain number of times a year that fall into the current count period, and updates the count dates after posting.

Alternatively, I can use random items. I can say I want 30 random items to count. There’s an option here because if I say 30 items, I could get 60 lines, since each item might be in two bins. This brings in 30 items I haven’t counted since the beginning of the year. We don’t care about the count period code or next date; we just find 30 random items I haven’t counted yet and give me those to go find and count.

It’s fairly flexible. When I hit go, it brings in items that match my criteria as count lines. For serial-tracked items in a location without bins, it works the same way as warehouse serial tracking: we know which serial numbers we need to find, and it lists a line for each one. When you print this out, you can track each serial number individually and reconcile by serial number.

Entering Counts and Adding Lines

We can definitely add lines here. If I find a different serial number than expected, it will do a reclassification to turn the found serial number into the expected one. Depending on your location settings, it might do a negative adjustment and a positive adjustment the way standard BC works, but it can also do that reclass journal to change the serial number from one to the other.

If you’re doing a manual count sheet that you’ve printed out, you simply come down the list and type in what someone hands you, adding new lines as needed. If you want to use the little USB-style scanners while walking around with a tablet, you can scan new lines in. You walk up to an item, scan it, enter the quantity, hit enter, then scan the next item. That’s a cheap way to do it with a cheap barcode scanner and a tablet or laptop.

Reconciliation

Once the counts are entered, I do some reconciliation. I have two options: the count difference summary, which is a page in Business Central, or, if you want to do analysis in Excel, you can export it and look at the same data there. I’ll show zero differences and item tracking issues, turning them all on. This gives me all inventory, sorted by dollar amount, and shows all the issues. Not all that magical, but it tells me my discrepancies: I’m over on some items by a certain dollar amount and short on others. On the serial side, it tells me exactly what my issues are. When I copy it to the journals, it makes those adjustments automatically and enters the serial numbers on the item tracking line, so I don’t have to do it manually.

At the bottom, it gives two difference totals. One shows a total difference of negative two, so it looks like I was only out by a quantity of two. That’s not actually true; I’m out by a quantity of 28, because the positives and negatives I counted offset each other. The absolute difference shows that if you exclude the offsetting, I actually had a total difference of 28 units and almost double the value discrepancy. So it’s a useful reporting tool.

Recounts

Once I’ve looked at that report, I can print it and highlight items to double-check, or I can use Generate Recount Sheets. I create a sheet called “Recount 1,” and any discrepancies are automatically added to it. People usually use a quantity threshold, so anything out by more than 10 percent automatically goes onto the recount sheet. That gives me a list of items for people to double-check, and you can ignore the layout, which is ugly. If I look at the original sheet, it locks it down, so if I try to enter anything there, it tells me I have to do it on the recount sheet.

The idea is that now I have the audit trail. I know my original count quantity, which was zero, and the new count quantity, and I can track that recount all the way through. It shows up on the discrepancy analysis reporting. I can also create recounts on top of recounts or do spot checks, so if I counted four and someone says it’s still wrong, I copy it to a new recount sheet. That’s a huge advantage, because the recount sheet is just everything I need to double-check. I can give it to someone, they recount, I enter the data, and I rerun my reconciliation. All of this is available on the handheld devices.

This other count has bin locations, and the idea is the same: now we have the bin locations, it brings in the lot numbers if we need them, and calculates all the discrepancies for us.

Posting

For posting, Copy Count to Journals copies it to the standard Business Central journals, including the Warehouse Physical Inventory Journal if you have that enabled, and the reclass journal for serial and lot number reclass. This gives us segregation of duties: warehouse personnel manage the count and copy it to the journals, and then someone in accounting posts it. You can also use the approval capability on the journals, since the Physical Inventory Journal in BC now has approval capabilities, so you can require a further approval before posting. Even without approvals, this lets warehouse employees manage the count and reconciliation, copy it to the journals, and then someone in accounting with the right permissions posts it.

When I copy this over, it just warns me I already have stuff on those journals, which is fine; it copies over top. Looking at what was created, I have all my items to post. For a serial-tracked item, it has all the serial numbers in there. It knows which serial numbers we didn’t count and automatically adds them for negative adjustment. I haven’t had to do anything. It does that for positive adjustments, negative adjustments, and manages serial and lot numbers up front. If I count more of one lot number and less of another, it does those adjustments automatically, not just strict full quantities.

When you run the test report, the big advantage is it shows the error messages, so it tells you what might not post. You can show only the lines with errors, and anything like a blocked item or missing serial or lot numbers that might prevent posting shows up. If everything is clean, it all posts. If something is missing item tracking, you get an error message, which is nice, because you can correct everything before you hit the post button.

Demo: Handheld Devices and WMS Express

There are tons of videos on the website on how this works with handheld devices, but I’ll quickly show WMS Express on the handheld I’m using. If you don’t have the Advanced Inventory Count installed, this shows the base count, which is the Physical Inventory Journal, so you can count on that. If you do have the Advanced Inventory Count installed, you see all the count sheets you need to handle for this location and this device.

I come in and start scanning everything. If you know Warehouse Insight or WMS Express, you can hide the bin code by tapping on the screen. Then I scan in the items I want to count. It optionally shows me a picture of the item, which you can close, then I enter the quantity, and that’s how I do the count on the handheld device. There are videos online showing how this works by scanning just text instead of barcodes, so you can use this style of device for counts without having barcodes in the system.

Counting the Same Item in Multiple Places

One important thing I didn’t mention: I can count the same item in multiple places on different count sheets, and it automatically aggregates the count total when I move it to the journals. I don’t have to manually total up that I counted an item three times. On the scanner, you have two options in the settings: it can add a new line every time I count that item, with that new count, which all gets added up when you reconcile and move to the journals, or it can update the existing count line.

Also, if you don’t have bins and you use shelf numbers, we can count by shelf number, so you can say you counted an item at one shelf number and at a different shelf number, and you have that location information to reconcile without turning on bins. That’s big in retail: I’ve got some at the front counter, some in the back room, and some in the impulse purchase area. I counted in three different places and I want to know where I counted. You can use shelf numbers in BC to do that with the scanners, and even if you’re typing manually, you can do it in the advanced count.

Questions and Answers

Q: Where can we get these scanners?

A: Our website is the best place to go. We can supply them, set them up for you, and show you how to scan text instead of barcodes.

Q: Can you count empty locations in the Physical Inventory Journal?

A: You can record a count of zero in a bin location for an item, but you can’t count empty bins. If there are no items in that bin, you can’t flag it as counted using the Physical Inventory Journal; there has to be at least one item. In that case you won’t get an item ledger entry, since there’s no adjustment, but you will get a physical inventory ledger entry showing you counted zero and expected zero. On the scanners, there is an option to flag a bin that’s completely empty of items as counted without counting an item; that’s a separate add-on, but it’s effectively part of the Advanced Inventory Count.

Q: How does the physical inventory count period code determine its dates?

A: It uses the calendar set on the shipping tab in the company information. You can’t set a calendar per item or location.

Q: When you create a physical inventory order, will it bring in the expected quantity based on the order date you specify?

A: I’m actually not sure, and my guess is it probably doesn’t. But if you need that, the Advanced Inventory Count module does exactly that.

Q: Can you calculate inventory for items with lots only?

A: Easily. You could do it in any of the tools I showed today, but in the Advanced Inventory Count you just set a filter on item tracking code and filter to only the items that have lot numbers enabled.

Q: Does it update the inventory count period code when you post?

A: If you’re using the Advanced Inventory Count, it does it automatically. There are also manual actions if you need them, and you can update the next count period code before you post.

Q: How does license plating work?

A: License plating is a little more advanced. If you’re using Warehouse Insight and license plates, you can scan the license plates. There are two options: one brings in all quantities of the license plate, which you can’t change, and there’s an add-on in the add-on catalog that lets you adjust the quantities on the license plate while counting. All the add-ons are free; they just change the behavior in Warehouse Insight.

Q: What reporting and statistics are available?

A: We provide some basic statistics, and the data for statistics like quantity accuracy and bin accuracy is captured in the count sheet lines. Once I’ve posted and copied to journals, we deactivate the count, and you have that historical data for as long as you want, so you can do accuracy and count adherence reporting.

Q: How do you create a blank sheet to add to the scanner?

A: Usually I put a dummy item number filter in there. If I want to calculate other inventory things on some sheets but leave one blank, I put a dummy filter on the blank one so it won’t generate any lines. Then I open it on the scanner and just start scanning into it, without a predefined list of items to count.

Q: Can you customize the count sheets?

A: Yes. These are just standard Business Central, and there are a bunch of additional fields you can add to the count sheets, so you can customize them as much as you like.

Q: Can a warehouse manager do their approvals?

A: Yes. The warehouse manager would be the one who copies the count to the journal, which effectively acts as their approval, and then someone else would post it.

Q: Who do you contact for more information?

A: Go to the website; there’s a contact option there. You can also go through your partner, since your partner is likely going to be involved. They can organize it with us, or you can contact us on the website.

Q: Can you void a part from the count?

A: Yes. You just take it off the count. If it’s not on the count, it won’t be validated and it won’t try to post. There are also strategies for full stocktakes to ensure you have full coverage.

Q: What is the pricing and how is it licensed?

A: There’s basic pricing on the website, or your partner can give you a quote. It’s licensed per company, so it’s unlimited users per company. Honestly, the first time you use it, it typically pays for itself in time savings. There’s also a 30-day trial, so you can do a full count or a cycle count and see if you like it.

Q: Can you add barcodes to labels?

A: Business Central has a built-in item label report with barcodes, and you can use our barcode generator to get a different set of samples. You can also go into report layouts and add your own barcodes in BC.

Q: Can you do an offline count?

A: You could use paper, or you’d need Warehouse Insight for an offline count. Right now WMS Express won’t let you do an offline count, but with Warehouse Insight you can do offline counts where you don’t have WiFi, which is much nicer than carrying around an internet hotspot.

Q: If you don’t have bins and you have lot numbers, can you still count?

A: Absolutely. One thing to note: if you don’t have lot-specific tracking turned on, there’s no point in counting lot numbers. A lot of people have it turned on when they don’t need it. If all you’re using the lot numbers for is tracking the outbound lot number you sell to a customer, don’t turn that on, and then you don’t have to count it, which saves a ton of hassle. The same goes for serial-number-specific tracking: you don’t need it turned on just to have lot numbers and serial numbers in your system. You only need it on if you want the full life cycle, from receipt to inventory count to movements to shipping.

Q: Can you have a count that has both items with lot numbers and items without?

A: Absolutely. Lot numbers, serial numbers, package numbers, and no tracking whatsoever are all supported on the same count and the same count sheet.

Q: Can you just not count lot numbers and serial numbers?

A: You can, but if you have lot-specific tracking turned on and you’ve got a discrepancy, you’re forced to enter a lot or serial number. In a case like that, I’d suggest turning off lot-specific tracking, which has some tricks to it, and then you never have to count a lot or serial number. You just record what’s coming in and going out, and you don’t worry about anything else.

Q: If you have directed put-away and pick, how will this make it better?

A: You don’t have to use the Warehouse Physical Inventory Journal. If you’ve used that, that’s probably enough on its own to make you want to switch to the Advanced Inventory Count. My suggestion is, if you have questions like whether it’s better, grab it. You get a 30-day trial on the cloud version of BC, so run some cycle counts and a full physical count and see how it works for you. If you want more, like hooking it up to your scanners, give us a shout.

Q: Will the recording be provided after the call?

A: Yes. If we don’t get to your question, we’ll send you an email afterward with the answer.

Closing

There’s a report that generates on all of these that you can use for the reconciliation and everything else, so you should never have to export. The idea behind the Advanced Inventory Count in particular is to get people away from Excel. With the base BC tools, about 90 percent of people use Excel to do all the reconciliation, and that’s why you’re there until three in the morning. Don’t do that; use the Advanced Inventory Count and do it all in BC.

If we didn’t answer your question, we’ll send you an email after this with the answer, and sorry for going a little over. Hope that was worthwhile. Have a good rest of the week, and hopefully we’ll chat again. Thanks, everyone.