As a user, we miss a big help on handling stocks: be able to limit some stock locations to some products.
We would need to have a declared list of products that can be placed in a stock location (by default this would be all). This would avoid erroneous moves that would be refused. More, when doing Inventories, this would make some lines be 0 for products expected to be there but with zero quantity; currently, these products are “invisible” (not mentionned on inventories).
I’m not sure that listing all the forbidden product is the best way to manage such constraint because:
- on large set of products, it may be complicated to fill and maintain them
- when creating a new product, user will have to check on the location to add or not this new product to the list
- when creating a sub-location, user may need to recreate the list of products.
I think it is better to use properties of the product and location to create matching rules. For example, we could want to forbid product with a minimal conversation temperature to location for which the temperature is higher etc.
I do not understand. If a product is forbidden on a location, it will not appear on the inventory even with a quantity of zero.
Also the constraint should probably be a warning that stock admin can by-pass.
I thought more of a white list. Maybe a simple memory of all products once stored in a location could be enough, with an option to explicitely “forget” a product. Products not on the list would raise an alert.
In our case a rule with a Supplier condition would be great.
In my white list idea, the white list would be used to create an inventory. So a quantity of 0 would be signaled for products that used to be in the location but are not any more.
Then how would you start filling such location?
This sounds very strange because a product once in the warehouse is no attached to any supplier and it can not be distinct from the same product coming from a different supplier.
I do not see the point.
By any movement, acknowledging the alerts.
I think to a supplier consignment location: we should be able to limit products to those of the supplier, and be able to see all products in an inventory, even those missing—in this case with a zero quantity line.
Our problem regarding inventories is to see missing products (those that were all sold and are no more there), i.e. those for which the inventory line shows zero quantity. Currently inventories show no line at all for such products.
We could try to have all product references in the inventory of each location. But having a zero quantity line for all products, even that should not be present in a location, gives no information.
Maybe I should give some details: to handle consignment, we have 400 locations (and 1500 products). Consignment locations are special ones: each should accept only some kind of products (mainly by supplier) and we should be able to detect quickly erroneous moves.
It does not sound practical because skipping such alert will require access grant that most users will not have.
This could work with property constraints I described. In this case the goal is to prevent mistakes.
I do not think it is needed so see such thing.
This should be managed with order points to get automatic refill of location (internal for consignment location).