Warehouses
If you are tracking inventory items in SME, it is likely that you have more than one warehouse you want to track stock in such as your technicians vehicles. SME allows you to create multiple warehouses.
- Default Warehouse (main warehouse) you keep and receive stock into.
- Technician warehouses to track stock on your techs trucks/ vans
- Customer Warehouses to hold stock that can only be allocated on orders for a specific customer.
Default Warehouse
In SME, there is a warehouse called Default. When creating new inventory items this will be used as the Default Location. You should enter your default warehouse address so it shows correctly on POs created from service and install orders.
Enter the Default Warehouse Address
1. Go to Setup > Company > Orders > Lists
2. Locate Warehouses in the Lists
3. Select Default on the right and click Edit.
4. Enter the address in the window that opens. (image below)
If you want to change the name to something other than "Default" you can.
Technician Warehouses
If you want to track stock in your technicians trucks you will need to create the technician warehouses.
1. Go to Setup > Company > Orders > Lists
2. Locate Warehouses in the Lists
3. Click New in lower right corner and enter the Warehouse name.
Assign techs their default warehouse for use on TechPortal and TechService on Android for SME
If you are using TechPortal or TechService on Android for SME, you will need to assign the technician warehouse in the tech User. That way, when your tech adds stock from TechPortal or TechService on Android, SME will allocate stock from your technician's default warehouse, rather than the item's default warehouse.
To set a default warehouse for your technician:
1. Go to Setup module > Users
2. Click Search > Search Active Users and select the technician.
3. Click the Technician Settings tab. Locate the Warehouse field and select the warehouse you use for your technician's truck. (image below)
Adding stock to Technician Warehouse
If you want to manually add stock to your technician's warehouse rather than transfer from your default warehouse or place a purchase order, follow these steps:
1. Go to an inventory item.
2. Click the Stock Tab
3. Click New Stock Location
4. Choose the Warehouse and enter the quantity you want to add in the Add Qty field
5. Click OK and stock will be added.
Transferring stock from Default to Technician Warehouse
Move one Item at a time
1. Go to Inventory item
2. Click Material Details tab
3. Select the line on the grid that contains the stock lot that contains the stock you want to move. Make sure you are selecting stock in the correct location and notice how many are available.
4. Click Move Stock
5. In the Move Stock window, enter the Move Quantity
6. Choose the Destination warehouse
7. Click OK and the stock will be moved.
Move multiple items at once
1. To move multiple items at once, you will need to create a transfer record, select the items and quantities, and transfer them.
2. Go to Inventory > Transfer.
3. Click New
4. Locate the Source and Destination fields. In the Source field, select the warehouse you are transferring stock from. In the Destination field, choose the warehouse you are transferring stock to. (image below)
5. Click the Transfer Details tab.
6. Click New on the Transfer Details tab
7. In the window that opens you will see the material available to move in the Source warehouse. Select the item you need to transfer.
8. In the next window you will see shows the stock lots for the inventory item. Double click on the stock lot you want to transfer from. Note the quantity available in each stock lot.
If you don’t see an “Available” column, click Views > Add Remove Fields> From Material Details and choose “Available” and click OK. The column will be added to the search view.
9. Once selected, you will see the item on the Transfer Details tab.
10. Enter the quantity you want to transfer in the Move Available column. You can’t enter more than the quantity in the Current Available column.
11. Continue adding the inventory items you want to include on the transfer.
12. When all items are added, click Transfer All Items.
13. The stock will be moved and the return will close.
View Report showing Quantity in Technician Warehouses
To see a summary of stock available in your technician's warehouses you can view the Standard Inventory by Location report.
1. Go to Reports module > Print Report
2. Select Inventory > Standar Inventory by Location Qty
3. Enter Inventory Location to filter by a specific Technician's warehouse and click Print.
Customer Warehouses
Customer warehouses are used if you want to keep stock in a warehouse that can only be allocated to orders for a specific customer. You will need to designate a warehouse as a customer warehouse and assign the warehouse to your customer.
Create Customer Warehouse
1. Go to Setup > Company > Orders > Lists.
2. Locate Warehouses in the Lists.
3. Click New in lower right corner and enter the Warehouse name.
4. Check Customers and enter the warehouse address.
5. Click OK.
Assign the warehouse to customer
1. Go to the customer record
2. Select the customers warehouse in the Location field.
Transferring stock from Default to Customer Warehouses
1. Go to an Inventory item
2. Click Material Details tab
3. Select the line on the grid that contains the stock lot that contains the stock you want to move. Make sure you are selecting stock in the correct location and notice how many are available.
4. Click Move Stock
5. In the Move Stock window, enter the Move Quantity
6. Choose the Destination warehouse which is your Customer's warehouse
7. Click OK and the stock will be moved.
Default Warehouse Location on Inventory Items
In each inventory item you select a default location. This is used in several ways.
-- When adding the item to an order, SME will will try to allocate stock from the default location. If no stock available in the default location the Link Status will go to Has JIT and you’ll have to see if any stock available in other warehouses.
-- When receiving stock on a PO, the warehouse you receive the stock into is the Default location. It can be changed before you receive the item as needed.
-- When placing a purchase order for the item from a service order, SME will use the default location as the default shipping location. (images below)
Receiving stock into correct warehouse on PO
When receiving stock on a PO, you can choose which warehouse you are receiving the stock into.
1. Go to the PO
2. Click PO Items tab
3. Select the item you want to receive and click Receive Item.
4. In the Receive PO Item window locate the Warehouse field. You can change the location as needed.
Warehouse Zones
SME will support an organization spread over geographic zones and covering multiple divisions. If you have a large organization covering the west coast area with different divisions for Washington state, Oregon, San Francisco, and Los Angeles it wouldn't make sense to try to utilize parts in a Washington warehouse for a job in LA. SME zones can help manage these different divisions.
In order to setup SME to handle these geographically dispursed divisions, you want to setup Zones for each division. Once you setup zones, you should assign warehouses for each zone including a default warehouse for the zone. You can also assign customers to zones, technician to zones, subcontractors to zones, workgroup to zones.
If a customer has a zone, then any order created for the customer will have the zone. If an order has a zone, then material added to the order will try to allocate stock from the default warehouse for that zone rather than the inventory item’s default location.
Setup Zones
1. Go to Setup module > Company > Lists
2. Select Zones
3. Click New in lower right corner to add the various Zones you need.
To setup warehouses for your zones
On service or install orders with a zone, when you add material to the order SME will try to allocate stock from the default warehouse for the Zone rather than the default location on the inventory item.
1. Go to Setup module > Company > Lists > Warehouses
2. Select a warehouse and click Edit or click New to enter a new one
3. Select a Zone and check Default warehouse for Zone as needed
4. Enter the Shipping address for the warehouse
5. Click OK.