Be Positive – Block Negative Inventory

When managing inventory, one of the key challenges is storing the right quantities. Too many items in stock increase storage expenses and products with expiration date may get lost, while too little inventory may lead to shortage, delay in supply and unhappy customers… but this is not all – if you are out of stock, recording documents and transactions that result in negative quantities may also affect the calculation of inventory values. For this reason, SAP Business One enables you to block negative inventory and choose the level of sensitivity:

You can decide whether negative inventory should be calculated in company level (as the sum of the item quantities across all warehouses), in warehouse level, or according to the setting made in each item:

When the checkbox is selected – negative inventory for the given item is calculated per warehouse. When deselected, the calculation is done in company level.

The Block Negative Inventory setting can be changed at any time. Considering its sensitivity, as of SAP Business One 9.3 the history of changes in this setting is saved to the database and can be tracked if needed.

Available in SAP Business One, version for SAP HANA and SAP Business One. This tip and all the other tips are available on the Tip of the week community page. You can also visit the Implementation Arena for useful implementation tips.