The Most Underrated Inventory Features in Business Central 

In most instances, when organizations install Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, they are mostly concentrated on the common inventory management functionalities. Such as creating item cards, managing inventory and carrying out basic purchasing and sales operations. These fundamental functions are necessary, but they form just a small portion of the system’s possibilities. 

However, Business Central provides users with a few powerful tools that allow for streamlining warehouse processes and improving supply chain efficiency. But the fact is that since these functions aren’t mentioned in the main dashboard, many organizations miss them. 

For those who don’t want their ERP solution to become just a spreadsheet program and to finally get their money’s worth. Following are four of the most overlooked inventory features of Business Central. 

1. Assembly Management 

For most firms, the idea is that whenever they manufacture or assemble something, they will require the entire complicated Manufacturing module to begin with. Introducing Assembly Management. This solution fits just nicely somewhere between inventory management and manufacturing itself. 

Assembly enables you to assemble multiple components to create a single end-product via Assembly BOM. Either you can create assemblies for stock by looking at the sales forecast, or you can adopt an Assemble-to-Order method that integrates the sales order with the assembly process automatically. The total cost of assembly is calculated automatically for the end-product based on component costs and assembly cost. 

2. Item Cross-References 

If you have ever had a situation where a customer uses his proprietary part number when ordering an item or received an item from a supplier with another barcode number, then you probably know the problem of having to do manual searches. 

Item Cross-References solve that problem easily. You have the option of mapping any number of different cross-reference codes to your internal Item Number. Do it as per customer, per vendor, or by universal barcodes. Every time a customer orders an item by his part number or the warehouse receives an item with a vendor barcode. Business Central matches the part number with internal item. 

3. Defect Management (Nonconformances) 

Typically, quality management is done through software solutions. These software solutions are not integrated into the ERP system, but are rather separate or even paper based. The Business Central’s Nonconformance management solution is a real treasure trove for those businesses that do not want to invest in a separate Quality Management System (QMS). 

The moment you get a product in a bad state or manufacture a nonconformant product, you have a chance to create a “Nonconformance” object associated with a certain lot or serial number. Then you can add information regarding the root cause, responsible person for analysing the issue, as well as corrective actions. And most importantly, you can direct your defective goods into certain scrap/rework containers. 

4. The Standard Cost Worksheet 

For most accounting and inventorying staff, computing the new standard cost for finished products at the end of each fiscal period is like a living hell. This usually entails transferring tons of data into the Excel file, computing new material and overhead rates. Also, manually entering the changes to hundreds of item cards. 

With the Standard Cost Worksheet, however, you can automate all of that. This lets you create a simulation of how the cost changes will look once executed within the system. Once you are satisfied with the simulated data, you can execute the worksheet and automatically update all associated item cards and inventory balances with one click. 

Stop Cheating Yourself Out of Cash 

Your ERP system should be handling most of your workload when it comes to managing your supply chain. Through the usage of Assembly Management, Item Cross-References, Nonconformances, and the Standard Cost Worksheet, you can save yourself from having to manually enter data, enhance your quality control process, and optimize your monthly closing process. 

But if you’re not utilizing these inventory management capabilities just yet, perhaps now is the time to explore further within your Business Central ecosystem. In other case contact your business implementation consultant for a “health check” of your setup.