Warehouse management for multi companies with NAV 2013 R2

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Posted on by Frank Deigers

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Hello,

For one of our new Customer, we need to implement a solution with a common warehouse management system for 3 companies. Each company buys her own product. The products are then store in 1 warehouse from where the 3 companies can pick items to ship to their customers.

Any idea how to solve this "issue" ?

Waiting for reply

Kind regards

Frank

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Roberto Stefanetti 12,998 on at

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no,

you need to customize or addon (if exist on catalogue); you can only mix the inventory between the companies

(sharing tables)

www.archerpoint.com/.../ms-dynamics-nav-2013-warehouse-management-wp-ap.pdf

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TomVH 15 on at

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Hi Frank,

Have you found a solution for this specific situation? I'm facing the same issue regarding an implementation of NAV at a customer.

Thanks,

Kind regards,

Tom

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Saurabh Shah 4,560 on at

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Hi,

As you mentioned that there are 3 companies so I assume that it is three different legal entities.

Now since the product is different between all three companies. I suggest to create as a same location in all 3 entities rather creating the common table since the inventory is also part of financial statement.

Now the only issue is the store person needs to switch between the company when it needs to pass the transaction.

Let me know if you have any further question on this.

-Saurabh

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TomVH 15 on at

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Hi Saurabh,

I'm not sure I'm following what you are saying.

In my specific case, I have 2 companies - different legal entities in different countries with different VAT setup etc...

What I would like to achieve is that each of these companies can select items to sell that are in the other companies stock.

This will then result in a purchase order in company A and a sales order in company B, which will be received/invoiced - shipped/invoiced.

That will be custom development, i guess? Or could I use some existing intercompany features there?

Thanks,

Tom

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Frank Deigers 519 on at

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Hi TomVH, hi Saurabh,

In our case we also needed a solution with a central warehouse for 3 different legal entities. The first company has been considered as the "logistic" company.

We did a lot of development. If Company B wants to sell item bought by company A, then after release of the sales order (in company B), an identical sales order is created in company A, with company B as Customer no. but the sell-to adress is a copy a of the originial order from company B. There is also a purchase invoice created in company B (a special kind of purchase invoice :-)) so when company A will invoice company B, the purchase invoice has to be posted in order to update inventory in company B (reset to zero).

The same occurs when company B creates a purchase order, release it and a copy is created in company A. So we can manage warehouse receipt and shipment in company A for all companies. The sales order created in company A

It is not easy to explain everything but our solution works fine :-)

Kind regards

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Saurabh Shah 4,560 on at

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Hi Tom,

Yes, in your case. I suggest to use the intercompany feature of NAV.

msdn.microsoft.com/.../hh168379(v=nav.71).aspx

Regards,

Saurabh Shah

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Jens Glathe 6,092 on at

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Hi Tom,

I think the problem is slightly bigger than using IC functionality... who owns the warehouse? How about replenishment or even seeing what's available, from all relevant companies? I would try to avoid a setup where you need to have IC documents, but no real benefit - like knowing (in NAV) what's available. Also keeping two (or more) inventories in sync is a challenge. Maybe a look at what Frank's company has implemented will help.

For certain companies (permanent establishments) we have implemented local accounting, providing us with separated balance sheets (even a local chart of accounts). You could set your companies up this way, and by default have shared stock. But every item belongs to one establishment only. IC accounting would be reduced to balancing the stock taken from one establishment to do stuff, with the order/invoice giving the indication for which establishment the transaction is intended. We have implemented the posting routines with a check an automatic posting of the flow of equity (everything with value) between the establishments.

Implementing this is a major PITA (I know, we've done it), but could be a viable solution, especially if the company count using the same shared stock goes up eventually.

OTOH, AX would provide you with this, their business units can see stock of other business units. And local charts of accounts. And local VAT setup. and so forth...

with best regards

Jens

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Community Member on at

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@Frank Deigers:

But are you doing this with 3 separate companies in NAV?

Our current software handles all of this within ONE overall entity, with the different legal entities below and within, all sharing a common warehouse, paying bills from one bank account for all companies, and handling all the behind-the-scenes intercompany postings automatically.

Our company has multiple locations within each legal entity and relies on department, sub-department, and category for reporting and assessing performance. Within the over-arching entity we can prohibit certain accounts from being used, prohibit vendors from being used, for certain legal entities, etc... But all have access to and share the vendor, item, chart, customer master files. Oh, and a couple of companies have manufacturing operations that draw product from the others and ship out to other companies.

How big a project is it, really, to do the same thing in NAV (or AX for that matter)? Any ballpark hour figures of programming?

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Alex Chow 4,481 on at

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We have a few clients that has this problem.

Say you have company A, B, and C that all share 1 location. What we do is the following:

What we typically do is setup is to have company A hold all of the inventory.

When company B creates and releases a sales order, an intercompany purchase/sales is automatically created to company A.

The item is drop shipped from company A using Company B's address and logo.

Company A bills company B and Company B bills the client

This way, proper intercompany A/R and A/P are established and both sides will have proper COGS and Sales figures.

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@Alex Chow

much like this forum that doesn't link responses into threads, I think that is a servicable way to do things, IF your companies don't have inventory of their own, and "all" inventory is at one location, otherwise, if you've seen better approaches, it's kind of disappointing.

Our companies share a common set of warehouses that store items bought in large quantities. But the companies themselves also buy and stock inventory. And inventory gets transferred from the warehouses to the individual company locations, as well as between locations with no warehouse involvement.

And how do you handle AP payments made on one check to one vendor for multiple locations/companies? Does each 'company' send out individual AR invoices, even though they are billing the same customers? How about shared deals/promotional spending, both monies out and monies in?

Rather than work-arounds, what would it take to do it right?

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