Inventory Control Method

Could you clarify what it is you're trying to do?  You want to make your Par locations perpetual or you want to run issues from a Par location without making it perpetual (an asset)?

Jon:

I thought all items were considered assets when ordered, then each department is expensed as they are used.

Wouldn't a par level only occur within a location? That makes sense. I am interrogating the client about what they want. The generally stated goal of the client is "We have par level control for some companies, and perpetual controls for others".
The general questions is if Lawson can support par and perpetual inventory control.

Lawson does support Par level (expense) locations and Perpetual (asset) locations.  Only items received into a perpetual location are booked in the GL as assets.  Those items are expensed when issued to the department (requesting location or Par location). Non-inventory is booked as an expense either as a PO accrual after receipt (if not invoiced before PO135 is run) or an AP expense when invoiced.  All our perpetual locations are in one company and we have Par locations throughout that company as well. Some of our smaller companies have Par locations too. Your question was probably simpler than I was understanding.

Jon:

Ok, so I was right that all items are assets to begin with.  Par level must be classified as expenses because the department (location) is requesting them. 

Before I ask more questions, are you willing to answer more of them?

 

Absolutely!

Jon:

My understanding of integrated perpetual and par level locations comes and goes. I reserve the right to return to this subject, but if I had a functional example it would make more sense.

Can the handhelds manage perpetual locations?

Robert.

Well, you wouldn't use them solely to manage your storerooms but they can help. You can use Lawson's MSCM (Mobile Supply Chain Management) which uses handheld scanning technology to do cycle counts, full physical inventories, issue stock from and return stock to the storeroom.

If your company would like to value pars as an asset that can be done from the Par Valuation process. I've seen many sites do this but a word of caution to that though is that the value of the asset is only as good as the par level defined for that item.

We have an affiliate that continues to run inventories for cath lab, radiology, lab, etc., and we recommended the par valuation for them also to save them time.  But they declined.   And you're right, it's only as good as your par levels.

I think you can only use MSCM for the cycle counts, not for full physical inventories. 

It does work for full PI's.  We did a full PI at 2 facilities last June using the handhelds.  We are wireless in the storeroom so the counters just had to send the data and move on to another area.  It was great time saver for me because I'm the one entering the counts in IC72.  All I had to do was page through and click Change to update what had been uploaded.  One thing we did find useful was to click the arrow to go to the next item instead of scanning the barcode.  This insured that we didn't miss any items that might not have been barcoded or were recently moved.  Also, for second and third counts we would use the IC175 report.  Internal Audit likes to see the process: what was counted, what were the variances during each count.  They haven't mentioned that they want to see the first counts so I plan to continue using the handhelds.

What's wrong if inventory is frozen, all ticket counts are entered in IC72, but the IC175 does not generate a listing?

Are you getting any messages? Any errors in the IC175 job log?

No messages at all - the system says IC175 completed normally but I do not get a listing. It creates just one page that only shows my job parameters.

Any IC175 jobs in the "waiting" queue?

IC175 wil only show the variances that exist, if any. What are the odds there is no variance between the system SOH and the count quatities? If they are all the same, there would be no data in your IC175.

There would still be a report even if there were no variances.

It should be two pages: the parameters page and a page saying "No Variances Exist To Print For This Location" and also showing how many items were counted, total dollars frozen, total items accurate and inaccurate, percentage accurate and inaccurate, etc.

We have a couple small inventories that are usually right spot on every time and this is what I get when I run IC175.

 

just another thing to consider - Perpetuals are good for tight inventory control (assuming clinitiasn keep their hands out) , Pars are great for buffering expensed stock close to point of use.

We have struggled in the past with managing case cart picking by perpetual because the credits process can become cumbersome (40% of case cart picking needs to be creditied back to the perpetual, hopefully before it re-orders). A point of use technology, on top of a par locatiion seems to be the most efficient way of moving inventory in and out of a "virtual perpetual".

Again, all just depends on what they want. Typically they want the best of both worlds which the hybid aproach can achieve if you can get POU compliance.