Inventory Management (SAP Library

Inventory Management

Purpose

You use Inventory Management to:

manage stocks of merchandise on a quantity and value basis.

plan, enter and provide evidence of all goods movements.

You manage stocks on a site and storage location level, and can assign each site a number of storage locations. If you want to manage a sophisticated warehouse complex within a storage location, you can link Warehouse Management to Inventory Management.

Inventory Management enables you to have an overview of your current stock situation at all times. Since a document is created for every transaction, there is a complete audit trail of all goods movements. Inventory Management is required for consumption-based planning, since the system calculates requirements based on the stock on-hand.

Normally, goods movements are valuated automatically and result in updates on the Financial Accounting stock accounts. SAP Retail supports inventory valuation at both cost and retail. For further information, see Valuation.

Integration

Required function:	Required component:
Management of stocks on a quantity and value basis, and of others on a value-only basis	Article, Site
Management of stocks on a value-only basis at merchandise category level	Merchandise category
Updating stock at goods receipt	Goods receipt
Updating of stocks at goods receipt for a delivery	Logistics Execution
Creation of transfer requirements for goods movements	Warehouse Management
Stock corrections when physical inventory differences are posted	Physical inventory
Updating of goods movements in RIS statistics	Retail Information System (RIS)
Updating of delivered values for goods movements in Financial Accounting	Financial Accounting
Updating of account assignment objects for goods movements assigned to an account	Controlling

Features

The following functions are available in Inventory Management:

Entry of goods movements

Creation of a document for every goods movement

Division of the stock into categories (such as unrestricted-use stock, stock in quality inspection, or blocked stock)

Inventory Management on a value-only basis at value-only article level

Batch management

Management of special stocks (assigned to a vendor, for example)

Special supporting functions (such as for generic articles, structured articles, and empties)

Various analyses (such as the stock overview)

Constraints

You can only use inventory management on a value-only basis if you use SAP R/3 Retail. For further information, see Inventory Management at Value-Only Article Level.

See also:

MM - Inventory Management

Background Processing: Inventory Management