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Service Management - Stock consumption from Technicians van (mobile warehouse)

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Situation - Setup has one central Warehouse and each technician has a van with stock items treated as satellite warehouses.

Requirement - During appointment, stock items used are consumed from the technician’s van. Technician need to also check for OOS to replenish van before travelling to first appointment 

Challenge - In Acumatica on creation of service order, the planner already plans and populates the stock items (components) to be issued to the Service order, however since resource is not yet selected, the stock to be issued is defaulted to the Main WH. When resource is selected, by default, the stock items to be issued on the Service order and appointment are still referring to Main WH. Even when technician adds additional parts and components to the Service order, the system takes the default WH and location set on the stock item which by default are set to be Main WH

Question: 

  1. Is there any easy way to change the WH and location on the Appointment to the technician’s default WH once the main technician (resource is selected). This is required for 2 reasons, a) so Technician can check for OOS on his van before leaving for 1st appointment, b) To issue stock from Van not Main WH on billing
  2. If Acumatica does not provide a solution to the above, from your experience how best do one handle such situation? 

  Thanks

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Best answer by Anacarina Calvo 11 August 2022, 19:45

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Angelo

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kristianharianja
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Not sure if a technician can be associated with a branch location. If this is possible, you can link a warehouse to a Branch Location. By selecting a branch location in service order, the default warehouse in the item line will follow the default warehouse set in branch location. Note that you need to remove any default warehouse in the stock item setting.

Ex:

 

Kristian Harianja
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I have not yet tried this but was something I was planning to look at myself. Under the users personal setting (see pictures) each individual can set Default information. I would think that the system would use this for the user when entering information but I don’t know if that is true.

 

 

Abe Majors
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I’m not sure how you are doing restock but we have a trailer that is set with min/max and set to source Main Warehouse for replenish. Once we process the FSO with the correct warehouse it came from, the system will replenish the trailer from main when we run the Replenishment.

We ran into an issue with this scenario and right now Acumatica has no fix but it they are considering a fix.

  • Item on a FSO is sourced from a secondary warehouse but there is no stock.
  • System is set to transfer from a main warehouse but there is no stock.
  • Transfer order is placed in system from main to secondary.
  • PO is placed in main to vendor.
  • Problem: The system does not see the stock transfer order on the receiving side in the secondary warehouse. If replenishment is run, the secondary warehouse will keep trying to order it. If not caught, the main warehouse will keep placing orders to vendor.
Abe Majors
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Thanks both for your replies.

What i was looking for is that when main resource is added, Acumatica should include functionality which replaces the WH on the details tab for all lines with the one default to the resource (on user confirmation). If there is an OOS situation, the Appointment would be held. However i think that the only way we could achieve this is through customization.

Angelo
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Thanks both for your replies.

What i was looking for is that when main resource is added, Acumatica should include functionality which replaces the WH on the details tab for all lines with the one default to the resource (on user confirmation). If there is an OOS situation, the Appointment would be held. However i think that the only way we could achieve this is through customization.

I think you should add this as a product idea.

This won’t solve your issue but something you might consider if you haven’t already. Our planner sources a separate warehouse called Jobs on our FSO. This makes the system create a transfer order and produces paperwork for the warehouse to pull stock and “tote” all components in preparation for the job. We override the transfer order address with the job name and customized the Pick Ticket to print the word JOB to indicate what to do with it (special yellow totes tagged with job name and placed on dedicated rack). That way everything should be ready and the only components added later would be off the truck warehouse.

Abe Majors
DConcannon
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@apickard5 - Assuming you assign staff at scheduling and after all parts have been added by your planner, once the Service Staff is assigned (appointment created) you can use either as a Business Event trigger to change the warehouse on the appointment Stock Item lines to the Staff’s User Profile Default-Warehouse. The service order lines will be automatically updated.  

When the technician adds a part to the appointment @amajors suggestion of one Branch Location per staff is the only way I am aware of having the warehouse default to staff’s truck ins Services. At time of staff assignment, you could change the branch location on the service order with a separate BE, but this solution only works if every appointment per service order is worked by the same staff - when the branch location is updated on the service order, it is updated on each appt.

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Thanks all for your suggestions. Great workarounds which i can play a bit with to find an acceptable workaround.

To be honest, BE is very powerful and provides us with a no customization tool which is great. However I am very skeptical to use such functionality for business critical actions. In such situation would prefer extending the standard functionality through customization as i believe this would be more reliable once all bugs are ironed out. What’s your opinion?

Angelo
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@apickard5 My vote is the Business Event is the way to go. They are easier to build, they leave your customer with less technical debt, and changes do not require downtime. Set yourself up with notifications if they fail and send yourself the error message. Leverage Acumatica’s programming - do not create more.

 

Dan
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Thanks all for your replies, much appreciated

Angelo
Anacarina Calvo
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Hi @apickard5 we currently have the following idea which seems similar to your question 
 

Please vote and share any comments on the idea. 

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