About Converting Items to Lot Control

While the stricter lot control requirements of Food Manufacturing & Distribution provide a greater level of traceability throughout the system, it should be noted that they enforce a greater level of discipline on the part of users. Once an item ledger entry has been made for an item with an item tracking code, every additional transaction on which the item appears must have an assigned lot number before it can be posted. Therefore, it is important that a company have the proper procedures in place and be able to maintain the necessary control before lot tracking is introduced; it is not possible for an organization to begin the process of lot controlling an item, discover it requires too much effort on the part of the users, and then "turn off" this feature.

In environments in which it is not possible to maintain this level of discipline, the user has the option of not tracking items. This brings about a different set of issues in that standard Dynamics NAV will not give the user the ability to introduce lot tracking requirements to an item if there are already ledger entries created without an assigned tracking number. This prevents a company from initially choosing to not lot control an item, then implementing this additional requirement at a later date.

Food Manufacturing & Distribution offers a solution to this dilemma by giving you the ability to convert a non-lot controlled item to lot control, via the Convert Lot Controlled Items batch job. This batch job assigns a single lot number to every existing ledger entry for a non-lot controlled item. Once this initial lot number has been assigned, all future ledger entries can be assigned specific lot numbers.

The Convert Lot Controlled Items batch job is convenient in that it gives a company the option of waiting until the proper procedures are in place to effectively enter and maintain transactions using lot controlled items.

For more information on how to convert an item to Lot-controlled, click here