Tracking physical inventory in the warehouse can really be a challenge if number of inventory items is huge, like in retail business of vehicle spare parts business, medicines, etc. Previously through SAP B1 it might be difficult to pinpoint any inventory item in a warehouse. But with the introduction of the new feature – “Bin Location” in SAP Business One 9.0, it will be now an easy job. In the new release family of SAP B1 – the warehouses can be subdivided into various levels and at the leaf level bin locations can be created. If properly used, this new feature can speed up the process of receipts and issues of inventory in the bin locations.
A bin location is the smallest addressable unit of space in a warehouse where goods are stored. The following figure shows a conceptual diagram of a warehouse and its bin locations:
To start with Bin Location functionality in SAP Business One 9.0 – we have to activate the required Fields (Sub levels like Floor, Room, Cabinet, etc.) for Bin Locations from the Administration module. Additionally bin location attributes (color, size, etc.) can also be setup at the same time for an additional classification of bin locations in the concerned warehouses. Later on these attributes can have attribute codes (red, green, big, small, etc.) to assign finally with the bin locations.
Sub level codes are also needed to be created for the corresponding enabled sub levels as per requirement. It might be obvious that the codes for the sub levels are many, so in that case Code Management feature will enable us to create and manipulate any number of codes very quickly.
Next we have to move to the Inventory Module. Bin Location Master Data in inventory module is the central interface from where we can create and manipulate the bin locations (bin location codes). Some nice features like “Receiving Bin Location” are also introduced to make this bin location feature realistic. This is to make the goods receiving process faster, i.e. the process will not be stuck to inventory allocation activities on receiving the goods from the supplier. The receiving goods can automatically be kept at some temporary location tagged as “Receiving Bin Location” before actual allocation. In bin location master the code management function is also available for quick and easy bin location code manipulation.
Once bin locations are completely (or partially) configured – we can start referring the bin locations (beside the warehouses) in marketing documents and inventory transactions.
Some new reports like “Bin Location Content List” corresponding to this new feature are also introduced in SAP Business One 9.0, which really make sense.
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