For inventory counting which involves many items in many warehouses and bin locations, rules of thumb are:
1. Select only items that you will actually count. If you select a large number of items but only count a portion of them, it will put an unnecessary burden on the system.
2. Spread your counts across more than one inventory counting document. There are many ways to split your counts between multiple inventory counting documents; some of these ways include:
- Create one inventory counting document per warehouse where you conduct counting.
- If a warehouse is managed by bin locations, consider creating one inventory counting document per bin sublevel or per bin sublevel attribute.
- Narrow down your selection when adding items, especially with bin-location managed warehouses and items managed by serial numbers. To do so, refine your selection criteria in the first place (for example: define the specific item group or property) and then remove rows that are not part of the counting from the document.
3. If you do not want to select bins with zero quantities, in the "Bin Location Selection Criteria" subwindow of the "Items Selection Criteria" window, select the option "Exclude Bin Locations for Items with Zero Quantity". Note, the "Bin Location Selection Criteria" window is only available if a bin-enabled warehouse has been selected in the "Items Selection Criteria" window.
4. If many items are managed by serial numbers, and the counted item units are many, consider selecting even fewer items for each document.
In addition, there are some general best practices that you should follow when creating your inventory counting documents:
- If you do not want any inventory transactions to occur while you conduct inventory counting, select the Freeze checkbox for all or relevant items. The Freeze action is applied after saving your changes. Until then new inventory transactions can be added. The Freeze action is removed after deselecting the checkbox or after copying inventory counting document to inventory posting, and saving your changes.
- In the inventory counting document, if you ignore the system message ‘‘You have insufficient resources to complete this action. Select fewer records and try again’’ (as of 9.0 PL10 only), you should add the inventory counting document to prevent loss of work. Additionally, it is good practice to update the inventory counting document at regular intervals to retain your work to date.
- The inventory counting transaction report provides analysis of current inventory counting documents. You should tailor your selection criteria to your specific needs before generating the report.
- You are strongly recommended not to change the server date/time into an earlier date after postings with the current date already exist.
- If, for any reason, the server date has been changed and you wish to calculate in-warehouse quantities by the creation dates of inventory transactions, it is strongly recommended that the count date is set to the current system date.
If you use the Manage Company Time function (SAP Business One Main Menu → Administration → General Settings → Display → Manage Company Time checkbox), and want to enable or disable Daylight Saving Time (Administration → General Settings → Time Zone tab, only available if Manage Company Time is enabled) or want to change the time zone, we recommend that you update the company time settings during off hours, for example, on weekends.
