Misc. Shipment for "Research Samples"

Epicor ERP 10
1

I have a business requirement to investigate a method to transact inventory that is used for research purposes.
The material is unique by part and lot, and each lot has unique attributes to it based on the part.
My original thought was to bring this in via Misc. Receipt, like I do with other inventory, but segregate it by bin and then it can flow through the same transaction pipeline as regular inventory.
The sticky part is that it is sold at $0, so I’m not sure this is a good way to go.

I noticed Misc. Shipments are geared towards this, but they do not have a lot specific to the line. Rather, it’s just by quantity of part.

Has anyone had a similar requirement, and if so, would you be able to share thoughts on a good solution?

2

I suppose you could PO the material, receive into inventory, then take the inventory cost back out by charging the purchase cost to your R&D budget (and doing a cost adjustment in Inventory). Then the Lot’s exist in inventory at 0 cost to be used wherever you need them or shipped right back out using the standard Sales Order/Customer Shipment process.

3

If it cost you money to receive it then that would be accurate.
A normal PO process would be required to bring a Lot into inventory and store the attributes (otherwise you would be doing a Misc Receipt and a Qty Adjustment).
For shipping it, you will want to relieve inventory for this specific Lot (otherwise you will be doing a Misc Shipment and a Qty Adjustment). If you don’t want to charge for something, then don’t put a price on the Sales Order.
When this hits the GL for your shipment, you will see a Cost, but no revenue.

4

The material is actually brought in at $0, and the Parts will be configured at $0 as well for sales price. The only other sticky thing is we don’t want to generate an invoice for this, and I’m not even sure if a $0 invoice would generate

5

There is nothing to post if it is $0 price and $0 cost. To have $0 cost, you must use Lot Avg or Lot FIFO though.

6

hmm, I don’t know anything about that. I’ll read up about it though!

7

We do something like this, but we do track the cost. Instead of it going to COS, it goes to a different GL for samples.

I set up a BPM that will not only require an “approved” $0 sales product code on the sales order, but they must also put in a reason for the sample being shipped.

This ensures that samples will be billed out at $0, and the cost will go to the right GL.

8

Do you just configure the part to go to a different GL (probably sounding like a dumb dumb right now)? I know finance wants to make sure this is very much segregated from the regular inventory, but I wanted to use the same infrastructure (inventory, sales orders, shipment, etc.) for transacting it

9

The part is in stock and all of it’s costs are in inventory. When the sale happens, it moves it from inventory to the samples gl accounts rather than the COS accounts. This keeps inventory correct, and the samples used per year can be budgeted and tracked.

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