My husband and I had a recent trip to Europe. Going to the loo, as they would say in England, was a bit of a surprise. There were times when the facilities were absolutely lovely. Nice tiles, nice toilets. Everything beautiful. And then there were times when they were not.
Just imagine, instead of a toilet, it is a hole in the ground with a white ceramic base. This was not pleasant and hardly even possible to use.
Boy, it sure shows how things have progressed over the years. Did the latter work? Yes, but not my preference. The former was wonderful and much more like we would find in North America. I have to admit I find myself making comparisons to my work life. Even on vacation I still think about Visual ERP and the Inventory Deep Dive application.
When I am working with Inventory Deep Dive, it is like the luxurious facilities. So many pleasant things. Such a breeze to use. Once in a while, I will be working with one of the early adopters of Inventory Deep Dive. They have an older version that does not have all the bells and whistles. The tool was very simple when we started over 5 years ago. It did the trick but really was so basic. So kinda, like the hole in the floor.
In the early days, Deep Dive, had a few key windows:
- Work Order Discrepancies which many times resolved the majority of the balancing issues; and,
- The Inventory Rollforward, which identifies the parts and transactions that are contributing to the inventory imbalance.
Now, we have added lots of extravagance. We are checking for the common culprits like invalid General Ledger postings and then the uncommon problems such as funky cost layers. The latter is looking for lots of things that can cause twists and turns in Visual ERP’s costing.
There are other times, a client will want help to reconcile their inventory and they don’t have Deep Dive. I pull out my old archaic checklist and toolbox. Here’s a few things that I look for:
- Run reports in Visual to look for layer problems. (i.e. Inventory Valuation – Neg. Bal Cost Layers or Cost Distribution analysis).
- Run the existing audits (i.e. Costing Tools for the 5 journal types and Incorrectly Matched Amounts).
- Use Vendor Inquiry to see if any inventory accounts are used on Purchase Order line.
- Use General Journal Report in Accounting Window to look for invalid postings to Inventory Accounts.
- Use scripts to find:
- Unposted Entries for any of the 5 manufacturing journal types.
- Bad FIFO layers where Inventory Transaction’s Costed_Qty is greater than the transaction quantity. Hey – you can’t use more than you received.
- Sometimes reviewing the General Ledger for odd looking postings.
- Compare the Inventory Valuation Report to the Inventory Balance Report by using downloads and Excel look ups. You can imagine this takes a bit of time to run and manipulate the data.
These may be able to find the culprit causing the balancing issue but I would much rather go into the Inventory Deep Dive tool, go to the summary, click 1 button and see a scorecard for the database. Can you imagine seeing the answer in 5 minutes or less? So cool.
Overall, I have to admit, an older version of Deep Dive or no Deep Dive reminds me of the hole in the ground. Not pleasant but it serves the purpose. However, I would much rather go for all the luxury. All the bells and whistles. Call me spoiled.
