Physical Inventory

You can use the physical inventory functions in Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) to carry out a physical inventory of products and handling units (HUs) for stock control and balance sheet purposes. You have the following options:

Storage-bin-specific physical inventory
The document refers to a storage bin and therefore to all the products and HUs in this storage bin.
Product-specific physical inventory
The document refers to a specific product in one or more storage bins and/or HUs.

To perform a physical inventory, you can choose between various business inventory procedures:

Integration

To enable you to post differences, integration with the ERP system is necessary.

Prerequisites

You have defined the physical inventory areas in Customizing for SCM Basis. Furthermore, you have made the settings for the low-stock physical inventory or zero-stock physical inventory and the putaway physical inventory, as required.
For more information, see Customizing under SCM Basis Physical Inventory Basic Settings Define Physical Inventory Area .
You have made the required settings in Customizing for EWM. If you want to use cycle counting, for example, you have select the Cycle Counting checkbox under Configure Cycle Counting.
For more information, see Customizing under Extended Warehouse Management Internal Warehouse Processes Physical Inventory .

Features

You can carry out a physical inventory for the following stock types:

Unrestricted-use stock in putaway
Unrestricted-use stock in the warehouse
Blocked stock in putaway
Blocked stock in warehouse
Quality inspection stock in putaway
Quality inspection stock in the warehouse

You can take inventory of all stock types in a single operation. For the products to be inventoried, one item is created in the physical inventory document for each stock type.

Recommendation

We recommend that you lock the relevant storage bins during the physical inventory. This is not necessary in the radio frequency (RF) environment.

End of the recommendation.

Activities

You create physical inventory documents.
To do so, on the SAP Easy Access screen, choose Extended Warehouse Management Physical Inventory Create Physical Inventory Document .

Note
In this transaction, you can create active physical inventory documents immediately. Alternatively, you can first create the physical inventory documents in this transaction, and then activate them in a separate step. For more information, see Processing of Physical Inventory Documents.

End of the note.
You print out physical inventory count documents for your physical inventory documents.
To do so, you have the following options:
- From the warehouse management monitor (Physical Inventory Documents node)
- From physical inventory document processing
  To do so, on the SAP Easy Access screen, choose Extended Warehouse Management Physical Inventory Process Physical Inventory Document .
  
  For more information, see Processing of Physical Inventory Documents.
- In the background using the report Print Physical Inventory Count Document (see Reports in Physical Inventory)
You perform a count and then enter the count results in the system. If required, you perform a physical inventory recount.
To do so, on the SAP Easy Access screen, choose Extended Warehouse Management Physical Inventory Process Physical Inventory Document .

For more information, see Processing of Physical Inventory Documents and Physical Inventory Using Radio Frequency.
You post the physical inventory documents in EWM.
To do so, on the SAP Easy Access screen, choose Extended Warehouse Management Physical Inventory Process Physical Inventory Document .

For more information, see Processing of Physical Inventory Documents.
If differences exist, you can analyze them. You can then use the Difference Analyzer to post the differences to the ERP system.
For more information, see Difference Analysis.