A question was raised recently by one of our Sage 100cloud distribution customers. They planned to open a new warehouse in another state and need a way to transfer inventory between the warehouses while still maintaining the visibility of on-hand available quantities.

Since this particular customer is not yet integrated with warehouse management software we will first investigate a series of manual processes using Sage 100cloud inventory transaction entry.

To start we plan to add at least two user-defined fields. The first, Tracking #, will allow inventory staff to monitor the progress of the shipment.

The second field, Final WHSE, will allow us to automate the transfer once it has been received at the final warehouse. For large orders, we don’t want staff manually entering another transaction so we plan to export out the original transaction entry and use the Final WHSE UDF to create another entry using Sage 100cloud Visual Integrator.

We expect that this use of Custom Office plus Visual Integrator may allow us to temporarily avoid a more custom solution until the volume grows to the point where this manual process is no longer feasible.

Once we outgrow the manual process we expect to implement a more automated system such as one that ScanForce offers.

ScanForce Warehouse Management To Automate Transfers

In anticipation of eventually needing to further automate this transfer task, I asked ScanForce who produces a popular line of WMS ( Warehouse Management Solutions ) for Sage 100 which makes use of both wired and wireless bar code scanners to highly automate these types of processes.

Transfer Request From Sales Order – ScanForce Lite

• Create Sales Order in Sage for the items requesting to be transferred (create a customer like INTERNAL TRANSFER to distinguish this as a transfer from real sales orders)
• The ScanForce mobile program will prompt the user for the “FROM” and “TO” warehouses
• User will enter the sales order number of the transfer request. The program will do a live lookup to pull the items and quantities on the order.
• User scans/enters items as they are being picked. The entry is validated to ensure the item is on the order.
• User enters the quantity. The entry is validated to ensure it is not greater than what is on the order.
• Upon data transfer from the scanner to Sage, a Transfer transaction is created moving the items and quantities from one warehouse to the other.
• The transfer sales order must be manually managed/deleted in Sage upon completion of the transfer.

To use a Quote instead of a Sales Order – 3 custom programming hours

Transfer Request From Sales Order – ScanForce Plus

Same concepts as Lite with the following variations:

• Checkbox is added to Sales Order Entry in Sage to indicate the order is for a Transfer request
• The ScanForce mobile program will have an option to only display during the Pick process orders that have the Transfer request Checkbox checked for more efficient processing.
• The “TO” warehouse code is indicated upon entry of the Sales Order in Sage.
• The “FROM” warehouse is pulled from the line items on the order. This eliminates the need for the scanner user to select the TO and FROM warehouses.
• The mobile program will compare the picked quantity with the order quantity to determine if the transfer has been completed. If so, a COMPLETE status will be set for the order.
• OPTION – Orders that are COMPLETE will be automatically deleted in Sage upon data transfer from the scanner. This eliminates the need to manually delete the order in Sage.
  If this auto-delete option is disabled, the Sage user will be warned if they try to delete an incomplete order.
• If using our Advanced or Premium version, bin locations will be displayed to provide a Directed Pick making the pick process more efficient.
• To use a Quote instead of a Sales Order –5 custom programming hours

There are probably another half-dozen variations on this workflow that could be implemented depending upon the complexity of your inventory transfer requirements.

This type of transfer is typically not needed if you are using virtual warehouses within the same building or in a location where you can easily carry inventory from one warehouse to another.

If you have questions on how Sage 100cloud might be better tailored to handle your company’s requirements please contact us here.