Inventory Inquiries
An inventory inquiry (846) is used by a manufacturer or supplier to notify a trading partner of on hand inventory that is available for purchase. In order to generate inventory inquires, certain values must be assigned on the Company Information page. The necessary setup is performed in the Shipping FastTab.
Fill in the fields as follows:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Check-Avail Period Calc. | Enter a date formula (90D, 3M, etc.) that will be applied to item demand activities to determine availability. If availability is not projected to meet demand requirements within the defined period, a stock out warning is presented to the user. For example, if we assign an availability period calculation formula of 3M, then enter a new sales line, the system will review projected availability and demand requirements for the relevant item over the 3 months following the planned shipment date. If demand outweighs availability, a stock out warning is displayed. Availability checks can be further modified by the selection in the Check-Avail Time Bucket field. |
| Check-Avail Time Bucket | Select the frequency with which you want Business Central to review current inventory demand to determine whether availability issues exist. The time bucket can be Day, Week, Month, Quarter, or Year. The selection in this field is used in conjunction with the period that has been defined in the Check-Avail Period Calc. field. For example, if we assign an availability period calculation formula of 3M and select a time bucket of Week, then enter a new sales line, the system will review projected availability and demand requirements for the relevant item on a weekly basis over the 3 months following the planned shipment date. This is useful in that it makes it possible to determine if demand will outweigh availability at any point within a defined availability period, rather than simply viewing the period as a whole. |
Setup activities must also take place at the customer level. For every customer that will require an inventory inquiry, a number of values must be assigned in the EDI FastTab of the relevant Customer Card page.
Please refer to Customer Setup for information on how to populate these fields.
It is also necessary to set up item cross-references for the relevant customer. When an inventory inquiry is launched for the customer, only those items for which a cross-reference exists will be included as part of the inquiry. Please refer to item references for information on how to perform this setup activity. Please note that the item cross-reference records that exist for a particular customer will need to be maintained as items are added or discontinued from inventory inquiries.
Once the necessary setup has been completed, inventory inquiries can be launched from the Customer Card page, on the action bar by clicking Actions >EDI and selecting one of the inquiry options in the EDI group.
Inventory inquiry options are:
| Action | Description |
|---|---|
| Send Original EDI Inv. Inquiry | Presents availability for all items. Available quantities will be impacted by any inventory inquiry location filters that have been assigned to the customer. |
| Send Incremental EDI Inv. Inquiry | Presents only those items for which a change in availability has been recorded since the last inventory inquiry was submitted to the customer. |
The system will only include those items for which a cross reference has been established with the relevant customer record as part of an inventory inquiry.