There is a client situation where he has 20 warehouse locations (number of dealers may rise in the future) and wants to implement those third party plants/warehouses in Epicor. Since I specialize more in technical stuff, I cannot recommend fully, but what options do we have here and what is recommended?
There are two options I can see: either having 20 different warehouses in Epicor, or having 20 different company sites in Epicor.
It would be appreciated if you could make any suggestions or recommendations.
Does he transfer stuff from Whse to Whse?
Does one Whse produce and another consume?
Do the whales do drop shipping for each other? Fulfillment?
Do they want Epicor to suggest transfers via MRP as needed based on demand?
Other questions
Is it raw materials or finished goods?
If it’s raw materials - does he own & manage the inventory in each of them or is it supplier owned & managed?
I ask because ownership of the inventory has accounting/tax considerations and locations in other states may complicate this. If it is supplier owned, there is a module for this, and it will do certain inventory transactions as you consume it.
Are these warehouses managed and owned by dealers ?
If yes, then there is no need to track these warehouses. All dealers will be customers. Book sales order against each dealer, deliver if anything returned records as RMA.
Scenario 2:-
If these warehouses are managed by the manufacturer and sales to be recorded only when the goods are sold by the dealer.
Then we can record each dealer as a warehouse location, book sales order and ship from the respective warehouse location.
Scenario 3:-
Irrespective of who owns or manage the warehouse the sales to be recorded only when the dealer sales, then the solution to be defined based on the COA structure.
Does the manufacturer want to track the expenses and the revenue against the respective warehouse location, and the movements between the third party location warehouse and the main warehouse should be based on the request of material, then the ideal would be to go with multiple site.
I agree with the scenarios laid out above, but there is a lot to consider in addition. I would read the technical reference on Inventory and pay attention to things like min/max/safety stock, movement requests and processing, etc. and then take a look at the ‘fulfillment’ side of Sales Order processing because you are looking at a small dilemma when it comes to deciding form which warehouse an order will be fulfilled if more than one warehouse has the same part # with enough Qty.
Once all that is understood, the setup of all of this should be pretty clear - but it’s looking like multiple warehouses of manufactured controlled inventory (paying rent for the space?) and a lot of transfer/movement/fulfillment requests being processed.