Here's a Creative Exercise You Probably Won't Miss in Allocating Inventory in Transit Using Microsoft Dynamics GP

"In the beginning there was chaos and dark..."

This is how I felt about Microsoft Dynamics GP's inventory and distribution modules prior to Microsoft Dynamics GP 10--in particular because of the way everyday business operations like cross-docks and warehouse transfers had to be performed. Clients and consultants would scratch their heads, engineering all sorts of workarounds to get inventory from warehouse A to warehouse B and still manage to accurately track the whereabouts of products during the process.

To those of you with moderately complex distribution processes, the nightmare was simple: how to keep inventory from being allocated while in transit from warehouse A to warehouse B?

Some of the solutions were pretty creative, I have to admit, ranging between

a) setup warehouse A and B as customers, then play with Sales Order Processing to "sell" to these while allocating the merchandise, which would make it unavailable for sale;

b) create an IN-TRANSIT site and make successive transfers hoping in the process that no one would sell out of IN-TRANSIT;

c) acquire an expensive warehouse management system and spend thousands of dollars integrating it.

All these approaches had a problem: they were extremely time-consuming, unreliable, and sometimes, downright expensive.

"Let there be light..." With the introduction of In-Transit Transfer Transactions in Microsoft Dynamics GP 10, Microsoft scored big with distribution companies, since it created a solid and controlled way of transferring products between warehouses with the ability to include landed costs and all the intrinsic details related to getting merchandise from point A to point B within the company. If only I had this available when implementing Dynamics GP at an $800M wholesale grocery distributor a few years ago.

The storyline goes ...