Need a way to track where small tools and equipment are located. Right now, we have "jerry-rigged" the inventory module to allow this, but it is a recipe for disaster. We have set up inventory locations for each warehouse location, job number, rolling stock (work trucks) and employee. Tools and equipment could reside at any one of those locations. We are then using the inventory allocation module to move tools from one "source" location to a "destination" location, so it does not impact total QOH or the income statement. However, this is a nightmare, as this mean constantly monitoring the (now hundreds) of locations set up and they do not necessarily have anything to do with the description of the location. This also required us to set up each piece of Equipment as a part in the Inventory Module (as well as the actual set-up in the Equipment Module), but we just assigned $1 value in the Inventory module. So now we can "move" the equipment to the various locations.

Right now, there is an "employee" field in the Inventory Location set-up module. If additional columns could be established for "Equipment Number" and "Job Number", then the location could be any of these three (in addition to the actual warehouse location). Then, of course, we would need a report that could run the list of parts by actual location (warehouse, person, truck or job).

I have tried to use the "last location" field in the Equipment module, but this was also too cumbersome as it's free form text and requires the warehouse personnel to distinguish "equipment" from "tools", which is an accounting designation, not a practical one.

by: Lisa D. | over a year ago | Inventory