Selecting the Proper Profile Tool setting to Manage Inventory Qty and Cost in ECM.

This KB article is being written in response to recent support cases where the customer reports that OH QTY is not matching historical documents.

• Often after running a Delta Build a customer will be surprised to find an Adjustment Memo with a Doc# = 0 in the ALL History area for an inventory item. This adjustment record is created when running a "Full" Delta Build. What happens is that the Delta Build runs and gathers all of the quantity records from historical documents and gets a total. The next step is that the Delta Build compares the calculated OH QTY value to the current OH QTY value in Inventory. If these two numbers do not match, the Delta will create the system adjustment "0" record to make the two numbers match. The end result is that you now have a historical document (The system adjustment record) that makes your history match your current OH QTY in Inventory.

• When troubleshooting the discrepancy between QTY totalled from all History and the current OH QTY in Inventory we have almost always been able to trace the root cause back to incorrect ECM Profile Tool settings for Managing Inventory QTY and Cost. In many cases the problem has been either incorrect settings, or changing these settings in ECM for a period of time and then reverting them back. The reality is that these profile tool settings need to be set correctly from the beginning, and then never changed. This will make more sense once you have a good understanding of what the difference is between the two settings as to how they affect your Inventory OH QTY values and the manner in which these values are updated via ECM.

Selecting the proper profile tool setting to Manage Inventory Qty and Cost

• You must select only one Station to manage inventory qty and cost within the same Subsidiary.

• If you require more than one location to have the ability to manage cost then you need another Subsidiary.

 

1. In ECM you have the setting "Manage Inventory QTY and cost for this station" selected. This means that ONLY incoming history documents will update OH QTY values in Inventory. The OH QTY values found in any incoming Inventory.xml file will be ignored. See below.

 

2. In ECM you have the setting "Manage Inventory QTY and cost for this station" un-selected. This means that the quantities found on incoming Inventory.xml files WILL update Inventory OH QTY values. The quantities for items found on historical documents will NOT update OH QTY values in Inventory. See below.

 

Which station will control QTY and Cost

• Once you have an understanding of what these profile tool settings are responsible for you need to make a decision on which station is going to be in control of managing qty and cost values. This is a business decision to be made by the customer based on their own unique needs. It is most common that this setting is managed at the Corp station where you collect all of your data and do your reporting. This is not true in every case. Regardless of which station you decide to use there are some additional rules that MUST be understood in order to prevent discrepancies.

• We have seen confusion where managing inventory qty and cost has been done based on the incorrect thinking that there are ?two sides? that manage this setting. With one side being the ?Corp?, and the other side being ALL of the remote stores. This incorrect type of thinking has led users to decide that the ?remote stores? side should control qty and cost and they would set the profile settings at ALL of the stores to manage inventory qty and cost. This configuration is not recommended or supported. This will cause your cost to be incorrect.

• The decision should be which single Station is controlling cost for the entire Subsidiary. No more than one station should ever be in control of qty and cost.