JD Edwards Inventory Management

The Inventory Management system provides the ability to set up and manage both Stock and Non-stock Stock Keeping Units (SKUs). Stock Items are those for which you maintain inventory balances, typically for manufacture of finished goods and/or sales to customers.

Non-Stock items are those for which you want to track all item information, e.g., descriptions, prices, units of measure, etc. just as you would for an inventory item. However, you can elect not to carry these items in stock. Instead, you can sell them to be shipped directly from your supplier to the end customer. This is commonly referred to as a "drop-ship" or "direct-ship" order.

Inventory Management allows you to set up and maintain a virtually unlimited number of different cost methods for your items. JD Edwards provides standard functionality for a number of Cost Methods, including Last-In, Weighted Average, Standard Cost and Base Purchase Cost to name a few. You can also set up "user defined" costs for historical tracking, price mark-ups or any other purpose specific to your company or industry.

Additionally, the Inventory Management system includes the ability to record item prices to sales orders, using a variety of mark-up and discount rules. To help you manage pricing more efficiently, you can also define groups of like items or customers where the same pricing treatment can be applied. Need even more pricing power? Check out JD Edwards' Advanced Pricing Module, which is one of the most powerful and flexible pricing systems available in any ERP software system.

Lot Processing is used to track groups of items having the same SKU but may vary slightly in content or quality; perhaps because of individual manufacturing runs. Another use of Lot Processing is for groups of different component SKUs that are collectively used to manufacture a finished good. Serial Number Tracking lets you maintain individual identities (serial numbers) for individual items sold from inventory, with full "trace/track" visibility all the way from your vendor to your end customer.

Items commonly move through inventory via purchase order, work order or sales order transactions. When none of these apply, the system provides several options:

• Adjustments - A simple write-up or write-down of on-hand quantity, typically due to loss, damage or to update an incorrect count.
• Issues - Items can be issued from inventory to any cost center in the organization, either through pre-defined AAIs (Automatic Accounting Instructions) or direct entry of the G/L Account Number to which the item should be charged.
• Transfers - If you don't need a purchase order or sales order, an Inventory Transfer lets you quickly transfer items between warehouses or between different locations in the same warehouse.
• Reclassifications - As the name implies you can "reclassify" an item from one part number to another. One example is to account for an item that has been re-packaged from one container size to another where the different container sizes have different associated SKUs.

Cycle Counts allow you to select a specific warehouse location and enter a count for every item in that location. Cycle Counts are often done on a rotating schedule for groups of items to ensure that the physical and system on-hand quantities are in balance.

Tag Counts are for a full physical "wall to wall" inventory. These are often done for audits or in conjunction with fiscal period closes.

Both count methods provide real-time quantity updates, transaction ledger visibility and general ledger updates to account for any variances.

You can use Kit Processing to define a parent item and one or more associated components. These do not have to be manufactured items; they may just be a group of related SKUs that are sold in various configurations. Kits provide this flexibility without having to maintain every possible configuration in your warehouse! (Translation: Your Inventory Manager will love you!) Of course, you can vary the costs and prices of the different configurations.