Warehouse Management & Stock Control

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I am an accountant in a medium size company in Australia NSW. My company got different departments, at the moment the store is not locked, inventory worth more than millions. On an average day, there would be over 20 people from different departments who can walk in and out of the warehouse and take whatever they want. It depends on them whether they record the stock that they took out on dynamics GP. There is no security of any sort. The warehouse is shut after office hours, but one of the department run 24 hours services, and therefore we find it hard to implement any sort of security in this situation. I guess we also need to find out if our high value of stock loss each year (over 10% of stock is loss/ written off each year) is due to carelessness in records or whether it is due to dishonesty.

At the moment I am under the impression that goods are taken away from the store but not necessarily being charged out to the customer. And therefore what should have been cost of goods sold now became stock loss expenses.

In terms of stock control - at the moment anyone can create parts on the system, and there are alot of duplicated item numbers on the system. It does make it hard to maintain. we got branches across australia and sales people often want to close a deal very quickly, which mean that many of them have to be able to create parts and sell parts.

As you can see at the moment the warehouse management and stock control is just a chaos...

Any suggestions, it would be very much appreciated.

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Tucker 175 on at

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It seems that your issues are more of the physical nature. Having a Warehouse manager, who is responsible for the inventory items at the warehouse would prove very beneficial to the cause. This individual should be one of the few users that have access to add, transfer and inactive items in the system. Minimizing end-user access will help control the issues. Putting business processes in place for all parties involved will assist the warehouse manager in being successful in his/her job. One of the initial objectives of the warehouse manager should be to conduct a stock count where issues like duplications of inventory items can be identified and physical inventory can be validated. Once the exact inventory item issues are identified the PSTL can be used to fixed and managed the issues going forward.

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Arturo Medina 696 on at

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Svinka,

You mentioned "inventory worth more than millions", So is like having the company's bank account open to withdrawals to anyone -without any traceability-. This is a serious business issue and should be approached accordingly.

Two quick actions I can think of:

* Explain/ Convince the Top Mgrs. this is the wrong way to run a shop, and if possible *include* figures, like the negative impact against bottom line.

Explaining the situation to middle mgrs. will *not* solve the problem, cause the have no incentives to behave differently.

* OTOH, get "Inventory Record Accuracy: Unleashing the Power of Cycle Counting" by Roger B. Brooks and Larry W. Wilson, It´s less than USD 20 on Amazon Kindle. It will help save you the effort of re-inventing the wheel.
www.amazon.com/.../ref=sr_1_1_twi_kin_2;qid=1522046023&sr=8-1&keywords=inventory+record+accuracy

HTH

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Tim Wappat 5,711 on at

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From the way you have written this, you already know where the issues are, you've already identified the critical ones!

Hence this post is probably seeking re-assurance of your thinking/observations?

Yes you have a serious problem that needs sorting out there. Get physical control of the stock, it might mean implementing some physical constraints for access, yes building some partitions and door entry system perhaps. Yes people will moan and complain that they can't do their job anymore - its difficult transition when previously there was zero control.

As said in another reply, create a new job role responsible for your inventory and task them with improving things. Sounds like some lack of segregation of duties going on too. -I created a special form that allows our sales team to create items in a "wizzard" way so they don't have to have access to the IV maint. Someone else validates the items and maintains them after they are entered for "special items".

You can also merge items where they are duplicated by accident, newer versions of GP have this and I think as Tucker said it was in the PSTL too, previous versions.

After addressing the issues, there should be a much more accurate inventory leading to better performance for the customers as well as your cash.

Tim.

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Tami Farrelly 5,080 on at

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as a good friend and mentor always stated

"there are no technical solutions to administrative problems"

good luck

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Community Member on at

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If it’s a question of ensuring access while also ensuring access control, it’s tricky.

If it’s a question of logging when/where inventory was accessed and checked out though, it’s pretty easy if you use Bluetooth Low Energy tags in tandem with an automated warehouse inventory monitoring system. There are also plenty of IoT enabled portable GPS tracking devices that can be used to track inventory in a warehouse and on the move.

Simply tag the inventory, set up a reader (could be a dedicated WiFi hotspot or even a tethered smartphone) at the storage area or an access point, and connect it via the Internet to dynamics GP.

Every time someone picks up inventory that’s been tagged and moves out of the monitored storage area or through a monitored access point, the system can automatically trigger an alert to GP and update inventory; no need for manual data entry and updates.

For more about inventory tagging and tracking technologies, check out this topic - Supply Chain Visibility Evolution: Barcodes, RFID, NFC, BLE Beacons

For more about how these technologies can be integrated with existing ERPs or inventory management systems, check out the blog here

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