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Manufacturing Outsourcing with a New Item Number

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Posted on by JE-29041340-0

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Hi:

When processing a Purchase Order for an outsourcing step in Manufacturing, is it possible for the material to be received in as a different item number?

Could, perhaps, Substitution in the Item Card be used for this?

Thanks!

John

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Dynamics 365 Business Central

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YUN ZHU 98,349 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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As far as I know, you can use the Item Substitution function when consuming, such as on Sales Order or Prod. Order Components.

More details: https://yzhums.com/9342/#toc1

However, there is no way to use it when receiving, such as purchasing, and production.

Hopefully other experts can give you better advice.

Thanks

ZHU

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Ben Baxter 6,833 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Can you please explain your reason to use a different Item Number? There are other ways to track Items allocated to a subcontracting step within Inventory/Manufacturing.

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KasparsSemjonovs 4,817 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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If I understood correctly, You are using subcontracting to generate Purchase Orders, to get the needed component for production.
And most likely in your case subcontracting provides a service - like painting or other kind of adjustments to the materials you send them, and when they send you back, You want the item to be with different Item No. so that You can in inventory distinguish items quantity not processed (not painted) and processed (painted).

From my experience - the Purchase order contains a link to the production order, so in case You do not receive this item from the PO, You will not be able to proceed with the production order.

Only way to achieve this I see this way:
You can provide in Production BOM the component for the processed (painted) item, and in planning worksheet system would generate a Purchase Order for buying this item from Vendor, but it will not indicate anything to the not processed (not painted) item - most probably this would need to be a component as well in production order, so You can consume it in production (when sending to vendor for processing). But it gives a risk, that the Unit Cost of finished good will not be correct. It might work if the not processed item value is the purchase value, and processed unit value is only the vendor processing cost (not raw material+painting). Then calculating together it could work.

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CU19051438-0 6 on at

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Did you ever come right with this issue? We’re using back office outsourcing companies and we’ve just been using the same item number. I’m curious to know if it simplifies things to create a new number. In my opinion, it might make things more complicated, especially if we’re chasing up an order. While there’s no homogeneity with our order numbers from other suppliers, I can see the value in keeping them the same. I feel that it reduces the risk of transcription errors. That said, my OCD brain would love to use our own Item Number. So, I guess what I’m asking is did it work for you? Did you find that changing the item number simplified your processes?

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