Lock an Inventory Lot

The Lot Locking feature allows users to lock (i.e. quarantine) specific Inventory Lots in order to remove those units from Available inventory.

For example, instead of setting up an "in transit" or "quarantine" warehouse (which is also certainly a viable option depending on your accounting needs), you can receive inventory into the main warehouse, lock the inventory, and then unlock when the inventory is ready to sell. Another example would be to lock the units associated with a Credit Memo until they've passed a QC inspection.

  • Locked Lot inventory will not be displayed for Sales Order Fulfillment. Other inventory processes (Warehouse Transfer Fulfillment, Inventory Maintenance, etc.) are not impacted.
  • The History section of a locked Lot will display:
    • The Username who locked the lot (or "system" if it was done automatically)
    • Lock date and time
    • Note/Reason (if entered)

1. Lock inventory automatically

1.1. Lock lots with "too small to sell" remainder of inventory

Navigate to System Setup > Inventory & Marketing. Under the Lot Locking section, check the Enable Automatic Lot Locking setting.

Inventory can be locked automatically if the remaining quantity is smaller than the smallest Unit of Measure.

  • Typically, this will happen if both A and B are true:
    1. The default UM is not the smallest UM that could be sold or purchased.
    2. Partial units of the default UM are often sold or drawn out of stock (e.g. Work Order).
  • Example:
    • Let's say we are in the business of selling footballs and the default UM is a Case which contains 12 footballs.
    • Whenever we issue a PO we are ordering by the Case and we keep track of our inventory by the Case but we have also defined an Each as 1 football.
    • If you sell each unit individually then you are selling 0.0833̅ of a Case at a time (i.e. 1/12).
    • After all 12 footballs are sold individually there will be 0.004 units left in the Lot. (It's just how math works. We didn't make the rules!)
    • Obviously it's impossible to sell a fraction of a football, so a Lot containing less than the smallest UM will be locked by the system. You can then draw out the unsellable remainder using Inventory Maintenance.
System Setup - Inventory & Marketing
1.2. Lock inventory returned via credit memo

THIS SECTION IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION.

System Configuration - Sales Document

1.3. Lock multiple Lots at once (via script)

AVSActInvLock_UnLock_Selected_Lots_v0.AVS
  1. Download the file attachment above.
  2. To install the script:
    1. Log in as the user Administrator.
    2. Go to Administration > Scripts.
    3. Select the Action Menu > Load Installer.
  3. To use the script:
    1. Go to Warehouse Management > Lots.
    2. Highlight the Inventory Lots you want to lock or unlock.
    3. Select the Action Menu > Lock/Unlock Selected Lots.
    4. Choose Lock or Unlock.
    5. Enter a Locked Reason (only if you selected Lock).
    6. The selected Lots will be locked or unlocked and will also be tagged with the Locked Reason you entered.

Note: To Unlock multiple Lots, simply select Unlock at Step 3iv.

2. Lock inventory manually

2.1. Select a Lot to lock (or to unlock)

As you can see Lot 110 is currently unlocked. Double-click to drill into the Lot detail.

Select a Lot to lock (or to unlock)

2.2. Lock the Lot and enter a Note

  1. Check the Lock checkbox.
    • If the box is already checked you can uncheck it only if the Lot was originally locked by another User.
    • If the Lot was locked by the System, it can not be unlocked by a User.
  2. Enter a Note/Reason for the Lot being locked (optional).
  3. Click OK to save the Lot record.
Lock the Lot and enter a Note

2.3. The Lot is now locked.

You can now see that Lot 110 is Locked either from the list view or from within the Lot record.

To add the Locked field to the list view, see the instructions at the end of this article.

Inventory Lot list view (locked)

Inventory Lot - list view

Inventory Lot detail (locked)

Inventory Lot - detail

(Optional) Add the Locked field to the Lots list view

  1. Navigate to Administration ➤ View Editor and find the default view definition for InvenLot.
  2. In the Available Fields section, scroll down until you see the Locked field.
  3. Drag the Locked field from the Available Fields section down to the Current View Definition section.
    • The fields from top to bottom are listed in the same order that they will appear in the list view from left to right.
  4. (Optional) Change the display for locked vs. unlocked Lots
    • By default, the values for this column will be True or False. You can change this via the Format column.
    • Separate the values with a semicolon. The "True" value comes before the semicolon and the "False" value comes after the semicolon.
    • In the example below you can see the Format = "Yes;" -> this means that True = Yes and if the value is False (i.e. Lot is unlocked), it will be blank.
    • See the list view example for an illustration of the format.
  5. Click Done to save the view definition.
View Editor - InvenLot

You can see below that Lots 96, 97, 102 and 103 display Locked = Yes. All other Lots [where the column is blank] are unlocked.

Inventory Lot - list view example