Information Systems:ASW Warehouse Balance Files

Overview

This page discusses the 4 warehouse files/tables that are often implicated in issues with the weekly out-of-balance reports. It was written after a thorough discussion with Protelo regarding the interface between ASW-DIS and ASW-WHM modules. This page will not have instructions to solve specific problems with these files but instead provide general insight into the matter, which has been validated by a firm that specializes in ASW; explore the categories below to find related articles.

There is some overlap with this article written by Sheila, although that addresses certain aspects of this topic, including trying to describe patterns behind some of the issues. I think the content in the "Overview" section of that article is more thoroughly described here. -norwizzle (talk)

Files

These 4 files keep track of inventory transactions and balances for all items. There is a pair of item balance/transaction files for ASW Distribution (ASW-DIS), and a correlating pair for ASW Warehouse Management (WHM).

ASW-DIS Files

The ASW-DIS module involves purchase order and sales order tasks. Items are bought into inventory and sold from inventory.

SROSRO - Stockroom balance: This file holds information on item quantities as it relates to ASW-DIS - on hand, on order, available, and reserved. There is no info pertaining to the item's location in the warehouse. Rather, the quantity just refers to how many there are in the system. Colloquially this balance has been referred to as the ASW balance.

SROITR - Stockroom inventory transactions: Inventory is the net difference between quantities purchased and quantities sold, so the type of transactions that make up this file are similarly two-fold: purchase order additions and sales order subtractions. Interestingly, the creation of a purchase order does not itself register a transaction, but rather the closing of an inbound shipment. This makes sense, as a purchase order is just a marker in the system that the items are to be added to be inventory, but it is not until the warehouse is done processing the items that the stock is actually available in inventory. Additions (purchase order) transactions logged in SROITR are thus associated with the user that closed the inbound shipment/PO. Conversely, sales orders do not register the negative value transactions in this file (subtractions from inventory), but rather the completion of a picked order by an RF user.

ASW-WHM Files

The ASW-WHM module involves tasks related to the movement of items within the warehouse (between locations). Many tasks in ASW-WHM are actually performed through another ASW module: ASW-RFH, and others are accessed through menus in Extensions.

WHOLOC - Warehouse occupancy: Items can be located in several locations within the warehouse. In fact, even users are locations in ASW-WHM, such that when you pick an item for example, there is a transaction representing a move from the shelf location to the user (location), and another from the user to 88-PACKING.

WHOLTR - Warehouse location transactions:

Relationship between files

Logically, ASW-DIS and ASW-WHM are related, so there are of course processes within each module that update files in the other module. The best way to explain this is to consider a particular process - PO reception:

• A purchase order is generated by a buyer, containing a list of items (PO lines). This purchase order exists within the ASW-DIS module. Keep in mind that this purchase order could be received/completed (i.e. brought to status 60) entirely within ASW-DIS (recall how manual orders are received i.e. through a reception note). However, for regular items in inventory, receiving the PO in ASW-DIS would mean that there would be no trace of these items ever entering the warehouse.
• Thus normally, when the warehouse receives a shipment notice for a purchase order, they create an inbound shipment for that PO. An inbound shipment is to ASW-WHM as what a reception note is to ASW-DIS (in fact, an inbound shipment correlates to a reception note). Creating an inbound shipment to receive goods is essentially the only way to receive a PO in the warehouse.
• There are now two documents with a list of the same items to be received - the PO and the inbound shipment. 'This is how the 4 files become involved. That is, tasks associated with receiving goods must update the WHM files and DIS files.
• An RF user doing RF receiving will update the ASW-WHM files and the inbound shipment lines.
• The closing of the inbound shipment will update the PO in ASW-DIS.
• These file updates are triggered automatically upon user action, and software file locks during these processes are what cause these discrepancies, leading to transactions or balance changes made to one set of files, but not the other.

This example was for a shipment containing all the lines from the PO, so there was only one inbound shipment created. In reality, partial shipments arrive at different times, so multiple inbound shipments are created for the same PO. This is the concept of zero-receiving some lines and marking them as back-logged, so that they show up as receivable on a future inbound shipment.

Other notes

DIS-to-FIN

This topic has implications in DIS-to-FIN. When purchase orders and sales orders are received and fulfilled, respectively, those transactions need to be applied to ASW-FIN. This is done during this process.