Guidelines for Transferring Inventory

Associate Product Transfers with Product Requests

Typically, you create product transfers in response to a product request. You also can create a series of product transfers to track the initial stocking of a new mobile worker's service vehicle.

If a product transfer is fulfilling a product request, create one product transfer for each product request line item so that you can track the status of each part. The Product Transfers related list shows all product transfers associated with the request’s line items. And, product request line items have their own Product Transfers related list.

Associate Product Transfers with Shipments

To monitor inventory movement, create shipments and link them to product transfers. Shipments contain information about the products on board, the shipping carrier, and the expected delivery date.

For example, you create a product request for 50 hammers and 40 boxes of nails at Warehouse C. The product request has two line items: one for hammers, and one for nails. To fulfill the request, your inventory manager creates two product transfers—one for each line item—that indicate that the hammers and nails are to be transferred from Warehouse B. The manager creates a shipment to track the transfer and then enters it in the Shipment field on both product transfers. The product request shows the related product transfers.

You can associate a shipment with multiple product transfers in the Product Transfers related list. A shipment’s product transfers can each be related to different product request line items from one or more product requests.

Update or Delete Product Transfers

If a product transfer isn't marked received, you can edit it normally. You can't update received transfers, but you can delete them. When you delete a transfer:

• The Quantity on Hand of the source and destination product items reverts to the pretransfer quantity.
• Product item transactions with a transaction type of Adjusted are added to the source and destination product items.

Transfer Serialized Inventory

For higher-value inventory such as computers, you can create one product item record per item so that you can record each item’s serial number on the product item record and then track the item’s movement.

Product transfers for serialized product items is in beta and is permitted only if you enroll in the beta program. When a product transfer for a serialized product item is marked received, the product item’s location automatically updates to reflect the transfer. This functionality has these limitations:

• The Location field on serialized product items can’t be updated manually.
• When a product transfer associated with a serialized product item is marked received, no product item transaction is created.
• Partial transfers of serialized product items aren’t permitted. A product transfer whose source product item is serialized can be marked received only if the product transfer’s Quantity Sent and Quantity Received are equal to the product item’s Quantity On Hand.

Mark Product Transfers Received

Selecting Received on a product transfer indicates that the items were added to the inventory at their destination. Marking a product transfer prompts these actions.

• Product items are updated or created. Product items track the quantity of a particular product at a particular location. For example, a product item can represent all the hammers at Warehouse A. When a product is transferred from one location to another, the quantity at the source location decreases to reflect the transfer.
  • If there's a product item for the transferred products that are stored at the destination, the quantity increases to reflect the transfer.
  • The first time that a product is stored at the location, a product item is automatically created that reflects the quantity transferred there.
  For example, if Service Van B never contained hammers, there's no hammer product item record at Service Van B. When hammers are transferred to Service Van B, a product item is created that shows the number of hammers transferred.
• Product item transactions are created. When you mark a transfer received, a product item transaction with a type of Transferred is created to represent the increase in stock at the destination. If a source location or source product item is specified, a second transaction is created to represent the decrease of stock at the source. The first transaction’s quantity is positive because stock is added; the second transaction’s quantity is negative. These transactions appear in the Product Item Transactions related list on the related product transfer, source product item, and destination product item so that you can quickly review past transactions at your inventory locations.