We mostly purchase our items from our Head Office overseas. When they send the items, they issue the invoice and we make the value figure as goods in transit in our G/L. After the transport time (typically 5 weeks seafreight in total) we receive the goods in our location, empty the goods in transit value on G/L and enter the items in our inventory.
To perform that process, we:
1) created a "virtual" location which represents the outgate of our head Office. Thus we can receive/invoice the PO to that location and the value enters the G/L goods in transit.
2) created a transfer route, a goods in transit location and we create the transfer order to bring the items from the "virtual" location to our physical warehouse. We post the shipment of the transfer order. The transfer order represents the transport.
3) we post the receipt of the transfer order in our warehouse and the process in accomplished. The value of goods in transit leaves G/L account and enters the inventory account in a normal way.
We did this with the single intention of being able to figure the value of the goods in transit on the G/L through a normal process (invoicing/receiving the PO) instead of manual G/L controls (all G/L transactions happen automatically behind the logistic process).
We created SKUs for items and proper setup to create reasonable replenishment MRP messages for each item. Local SKU is set as "Fixed Quantity" and virtual SKU as "lot-for-lot". Typical delivery time ex-works of my head-office is 8W and transport time (by sea) is 5W. The reorder point is set to reflect 8+5=13W consumption (end-to-end replenishment time). And here comes the problem we did not realize during implementation of this process:
If the reorder point is crossed-down in my local location today, MRP suggests to create today a transfer order from the virtual location. In a chain/tied fashion, MRP suggests to create a PO to my head-Office to fulfill the just created need at the virtual location. So far so good, but the time frame. I cannot start a transfer today because the PO would be created in the past. I can start a PO today to be delivered at the virtual location 8W ahead and from that date create a transfer which will take 5W on top to bring the item to my local location. Before accepting the actions from the planning worksheet we can adjust the dates to reasonable ones, of course. But when we run the planning worksheet again, MRP consider the actions are too late and asks me to delete the existing order and create other ones with earlier dates. These are waste messages and should not show up.
Questions:
1) Is there a way to set SKU, locations, etc... to force right time frame for such transfer/PO chain?
2) Would you suggest another way to represent this process within NAV?
Thanks