Inventory 

The practice of taking an annual inventory count at the end of the fiscal year often requires an enormous effort for large warehouse complexes. The costs to a company are relatively high, and the physical counting process in the warehouse is labor intensive. In many factories, an annual inventory count would result in lost output because of the effort required. Therefore, several variations to the conventional annual inventory count are allowed by law under certain circumstances.

The SAP Warehouse Management (WM) application supports the following inventory methods:

For information about the inventory sampling method, see MM Inventory Sampling documentation. All other methods are described in this section.

For a storage type, you can define either an annual or a continuous inventory count. You can also select one or more of the other types of inventory methods, such as an inventory based on stock placement or based on stock removal (zero stock check).

Unlike the material-related inventory in the Inventory Management (IM) application component, you use WM to carry out an inventory on a storage bin level for the warehouses managed in WM. The inventory is regarded as completed if an inventory was taken for every storage bin in the warehouse at least once during the fiscal year.

Choosing an Inventory Method

Since storage bins and stock movements of materials are continuously monitored in WM, the technical prerequisites are in place to support the continuous inventory method. With WM you can define a different inventory method for each storage type, for example, high rack storage has continuous inventory during stock placement while bulk storage has an annual inventory. Some of the inventory methods supported by WM are subject to legal restrictions, while other methods cannot be implemented for technical and/or organizational reasons. Inventory methods must always be decided by the inventory specialist in conjunction with the company's auditors.

The description of the inventory methods in this guide refer only to the technical prerequisites that are necessary to set up and carry out the different inventory methods. The notes mentioned here are not complete. They can be used only to supplement and check the company-specific inventory requirements.

Checking the Inventory Status

To check whether inventory has been taken at least once during the fiscal year, choose Physical inventory ® Evaluations ® Inventory status from the WM menu bar.

Results of an Inventory in WM

After an inventory has been taken in WM, inventory data is stored for both the storage bin and the quant, if applicable. An indicator that identifies the inventory method is set. To access this information, choose  Physical inventory ® Inventory history from the WM menu bar.

The system records inventory differences, if any, in an interim storage area for differences, from where they are recorded in IM and automatically cleared from the interim storage area in WM.

See also:

Controlling the Inventory Process