How to Manage Inventory in Dynamics NAV Without Thinking

One of Microsoft Dynamics NAV’s many useful features is the ability to automate the inventory replenishment system. With the click of just one button, Dynamics NAV will automatically generate a list of items that need to be purchased or built to replenish inventory according to the reordering policy settings you specified. This feature is great because it takes away the headache of keeping track of your inventory levels and worrying about when and where you need to purchase more items to replenish your stock.

Here are the simple steps you need to follow to take advantage of this great feature, and replenish inventory without doing the math.

Say your company is selling Webcams in all of your warehouses across Canada, and each location requires a minimum stock of 5 items per location and a max of 10 Webcams. As you can see in the example below, the company currently has 50 items in stock (10 per location) across Canada.

If I process multiple sales orders over time, I will deplete my inventory level below the minimum requirement in some locations and will have to purchase the Webcams to restock them. As you can see, I sold past the minimum stock level that is required at the Blue, Green and Yellow warehouses; I will have to purchase the Webcams for these locations to restock the inventory at the acceptable level.

In order to avoid having to manually figure out how many items I need to purchase and at which locations, I can just get Dynamics NAV to do this automatically for me. In the Item Card, I can click on the Req. Worksheet function, to take me to the Req. Worksheet page.

In the Req. Worksheet page, I can run the Calculate Plan function. As you can see, I am specifying in the Calculate Plan batch job so that NAV will calculate the number of Webcams that I should purchase to replenish my stock in each warehouse.

After I run the batch job, NAV correctly identifies the number of Webcams I need to purchase for each location. From this point, I can click the Carry Out Action Message function to automatically generate 3 separate Purchase Orders to replenish my inventory with Webcams.

Back in the Item Card, you can see that Dynamics NAV has automatically generated Purchase Orders of the Webcams which are ready to be invoiced and received.

Three separate Purchase Orders are ready to be posted.

This is one of many useful functions that help NAV users to quickly avoid going through many cumbersome steps to run a process. NAV has many built-in functions that will help you save time and effort by automating many of the repetitive processes you perform on a daily basis.