Good morning all,
I’m new to Epicor (but not ERP’s) and have been tasked with getting physical inventory setup and done using barcodes. We currently do not use barcodes and PI on site takes 3-4 days. My previous place would print out tags ahead of time that had a warehouse and location barcode. We’d go scan ware, scan location then enter qty. Can someone point me in the right direction for getting this setup in e10?
There is some documentation floating about regarding doing PI, but Epicor has a process built in that works well. The menu items Cycle Count Period Definition, Initialize Physical Inventory, Cycle Count maintenance (generate and print tags), and Count Tag Entry are all you need. We did build a better dashboard to monitor the counts/tags/etc. but the functionality provided does work well.
Just now, we finished printing and organizing nearly 700 tickets for our PI tomorrow. It’ll take about 5 hours based on history. We cleanup, prepare, rearrange, move stuff into easier counting locations, etc. for about a month. We have count teams start at 5:30, auditing starts at 8:30, and count entry (2 people) scan and enter count tags for about 2 hours. Then it’s all done.
You didn’t provide any real detail and the questions is very open ended. Sounds like you may have more of an organizational problem and you’ll need to decide if you want to process on paper tags, or use electronic data collection.
Some time back @ckrusen posted a nice PDF of the steps of a Phys Inv in E10: Physical inventory question - #14 by ckrusen
The Epicor Application User Guide also has information in the Inventory Management chapter.
There are some definite challenges here. There are no barcodes anywhere and it looks like this PI will be a long drawn out one. But as we move forward we’ll be getting everything barcoded and get scanning setup.
Barcodes are nothing more than a “machine readable font” and a barcode scanner is just a “keyboard that can read those barcodes”. The only thing they save you is the typing.
Unless you have a scanner that lets you enter a qty after the scan(s) - saving them to be exported later - they’ll not save you much.
One quick way to use them is to enable the barcodes on count tags. The counters won’t use them, they’ll just write the count on the tag. After the tags are turned in, the data entry folks could use scanners to scan the tag. This would save them from manually typing the partnum and location (also preventing typos). Then they’d manually type the qty in.
A big hint if your people want to use Excel as a temporary holder of data, the tag numbers are text consisting of numbers with leading zeros. If you copy and paste into Excel, it will convert them to numbers. In the Excel file, make the tag number column formated for Text before pasting.
Also cannot be stressed enough… Make sure the selected count date is correct when initially making the phys inv. The qty you provide will be compared to the QOH on that date. And any difference is what becomes the qty used in the ADJ-QTY trans that posting the PI creates.
The parts about the scanners during counting was assuming you’re not employing a fancier system that has radio based scanners that is creating the count entry at the time when they’re counted.
Welcome Michael!
Printing the barcodes is easy, and can be done out of the box. If you’re SaaS it’s already there, if you’re on-premise Epicor includes a Code 39 (aka Code 3 of 9) barcode font (DWBAR39.TTF or some such) that you can install on your server. Once it’s installed there is a checkbox on several different printable forms for “Print Barcodes”.
@Ernie - isn’t there a setting in Company Maint (or Company Settings) that you have to choose to enable barcodes throughout the system?
(Only applies to On-Prem)
In Company Configuration > Modules > Materials on the Inventory card there is a “Print Bar Codes” checkbox… in the system help all it says is “Option that controls the sensitivity of Bar Code Printing options.”
It appears in both on-prem and SaaS (DT anyhow) implementations.
I’ve never used it to my knowledge… but perhaps for Inventory reports (actual reports involved is not specified) it would default the Print Bar Codes checkbox on the report level automagically. I’ll try to remember it next time I’m at that stage.
I should add that whether or not that checkbox is selected, you can always select it at the report level and (assuming the font is installed) the barcodes will print on the form.
Cycle Counting and Physical Inventory are very related in Epicor ERP and have been for a very long time.
and maybe even temp workers to count. These outsiders dont really understand the difference between a “count of 2 spool” and a “count of 100 feet on 2 spools”, which leads to huge errors.Within Kinetic, if you want to run a complete physical, you still launch the cycle count program, and click the checkbox for a complete physical. Outside of that checkbox, the process is nearly identical to run a count. Our Count process is described by many as “complex” but it is also auditable, and trackable. It allows you to start the count, process, print discrepancy reports, enter discrepancy reasons, and then even generate recount tags for those items that are out of tolerance.
Below is a picture of a slide I created years ago for a user group meeting that describes the process… note that there are three main colors. Red is startup, Blue is the "monthly (or periodic) step, and GREEN is the daily steps. The boxes outlined in ORANGE are more Administrative, and outlined in PURPLE can be done by the stock room staff.
Tim that’s fantastic information. We are thinking about using Epicor Mobile for PI this time around after determining that it would take too long to get all our reels and products properly barcoded. We’ll use the barcoded tags from the reports once I finish verifying all the locations are correct.
