Inventory Adjustments Driven by Variance Instead of Ending Quantity
The inventory adjustments are more painful than they need to be.
Designed Process
- Perform inventory count
- Enter adjustments with ending quantity
Actual Process
- Perform inventory count
- Other transactions occur that change inventory values (shipments, transfers, etc.)
- Desire to enter adjustments with ending quantity that calculates the variance
- Calculate the variance from #1's count to determine what the new count needs to be adjusted by
- Pull current inventory
- Take the calculated variance from #4 and apply that to the current inventory #5
- Enter the resulting quantity in the inventory adjustment
Fantastic Process that is used in other systems
- Perform inventory count
- DETERMINE VARIANCES based on the counts
- STUFF HAPPENS AND THINGS CHANGE
- Enter adjustments by ENTERING THE VARAINCE, which calculates the ending quantity
The con to this is that a transfer may move inventory to another location. However, this is much easier to figure out than running the full inventory report, adjusting based on variances, then entering the ending quantity.
The pro to this is that life doesn't have to stop for inventory counts.
We already do cycle counts in very restricted subsets, so that doesn't help. The "new quantity" default value that's already discussed doesn't address this. Other systems allow you to enter EITHER the ending quantity or variance. It literally calculates the other field based on that entry. You can choose to adjust one row with the variance and the next row with the ending quantity.
For end of the month inventory reconciliations with 3rd parties, we receive those reports a couple days after the EOM. Transactions occur so we have to do all the work for every location at various times. I feel like this is straightforward but no adjustments to software is. I'm happy to discuss this in more detail and share my screen to walk you through it.
Thanks,
Joe
Absolutely agree. We just want to enter the variance. Especially for damaged goods etc - if 153 units are damaged, why do we need to calculate the new stock level, we just want to enter 153.