Containers Overview - Advanced Warehouse Management

Introduction

Advanced Warehouse Management is available as an addon to your subscription. Contact sales if you want to enable this module.

When you have different inventory locations (called Facilities in Versa), you probably have areas within each facility to store your inventory. We call such areas containers which is a container that holds inventory. In real life, you probably have sections like Bins or Racks.

To use this module, you would first define your containers. You can give each container a short identifier, Bin A, Rack A for example.  A list of containers can be uploaded via a csv import.

Once the container is defined, you would need to tell the system which product and how many of them are in each container. This is best done via a csv import when you first start using the module.

Notes

There are a few important notes to make about quantities stored in a container.

A container can hold different products. A product can be stocked in multiple containers. Each facility can have different containers that stock the same products.

The in and out of quantity in container(called container transactions) are not part of the audit trail, whereas Inventory Transactions, which affect inventory accounts, are part of the audit trail. As a consequence, users have more ability to delete containers, container types, reassign containers, delete container transactions, etc, all with a view to making warehouse operations less cumbersome. Such operations have no effect on the G/L balances.

The quantities associated with each container is not 100% tied to the inventory stored in the system. For example, you can have 100 unit for product a as total inventory, but only 50 of them is stored in a container. The rest of them is stored in an unknown place . This is allowed to give you flexibility in tracking your inventory in containers. Maybe you only put 50 in a container and the rest is stilling in a pile to be put away. Maybe before you stock the products, someone walks in and grab a few units and ship them away. As a result of this, when you are doing inventory count, you would need to adjust your total inventory on hand to adjust your inventory values and then adjust the quantities stored in each container.

Menu Items

There are are few menu items under Products, Advanced Warehouse.
- Container Types: You define the different types of containers you have. Only one level is allowed. Create types like Rack or Bin for example
- Containers: Use this to manage a listing of your containers. You can upload new containers through csv on this page.
- Define and Stock (Define Container and Set Count): This is for day to day management of the quantities stored in the containers. You would tell the system what is the latest count of your products in different containers. Enter the identifier of the container and the actual quantity of a product in a container to update the system. Barcode scanning is support on this page.
- Container Transactions: See a list of the in and out of quantities in containers. Every time you ship inventory , pick inventory on picklist, receive new inventory and stocking it. The system creates an entry which you can view on this page.
- Container Contents: This is a list of all your containers and the contents (product name and quantity) in them.
- Contents / Inventory Comparison: This shows your the total of quantities in containers for each product and the total quantity on hand for your products. Use this to note discrepancies and for adjustments.

Shipping and Receiving

As a result of using this module, there are a few additional steps to include in the shipping and receive processing.

When picking an product on a pick list, if the product is stocked in containers, you would need to tell the system which containers (if there are multiple containers for the same product) you are pick from.

Logistics → +New Shipment

When shipping products from containers – the user can ship the products from the container by choosing the appropriate container from the list when creating a new shipment.

Logistics → Stock Inventory

This is an addition step to perform when new PO items are received. You would instruct the system where the new inventory is stocked by choosing the containers to put the new items in. See settings below on option to skip this step.

Settings:

Found under Enterprise setup, entity settings, containers.

Container Auto-Stocking – Automatically stock newly received products if assigned to a single container.
Example:
1) Item1 exist in Container1
2) When the user is received new Item1 from the Purchase Order, the items will automatically put into Container1 without the need to stock it.