Managing inventory operations in a company can be tiresome and could always end up in chaotic situations with proper planning and established rules of operations. Moreover, inventory operations and their effectiveness is the main tool for successful company operations and product movement. With the turn-in to digitization, companies have been releasing management software that would simplify the operations of the company including the inventory.
This development led to the invention of the SaaS model of software which means Software as a service(SaaS). Many platforms have been developed and various Enterprise and resource planning software has been seen recently due to their capabilities. ERPs can be used to run the company operations of a particular aspect of the entire management of the company.
Odoo is one of the ERP which is best in the business open-source, customizable fully integrated business management software. The inventory management of Odoo is considered top-notch and the best among its competitors. Furthermore, the operations in Odoo are synchronized, systematic, and reliable as they operate on a predefined set of rules and routes of product moves described.
This blog will provide insight into putaway rules and removal strategies of Odoo 14.
Putaway rules
These are the rules of actions that have been described in the Odoo platform which will be used at the time of the purchase and incoming shipment of the products. Moreover, the putaway rules defined will place the products being shipped to the company inventory into specified locations of the warehouse. The rules can be defined for routing which will allow the products to be placed at specified locations after being processed through different stages of operations.
To define the put-away rules the user should initially enable the storage location and multi-step routes option available in the settings menu of the inventory module.
The put-away rules will be defined in the put-away rules menu accessible from the configuration tab. Here the user can define new rules by specifying the product, location of the arrival, storage locations, and the company of operations.
On selecting the respective rule the user can see the destination location details being described along with the source or the origin of the product. The product movies will be depicted under the traceability menu of the quotation.
Furthermore, the product moves of the respective product can be seen under the respective warehouse which can be selected from the warehouse menu accessible from the configuration tab. Here all the product movies concerning the products of the warehouse will be described and the user can view the respective one using the various default as well as filtering options available.
Removal strategies
The Odoo platform allows the users to configure the various removal strategies of operations which allow the user an upper hand in the inventory management operations. The removal strategies of operations initially operate based on the lots and serial numbers being described for the product of the platform.
To do so the user should initially enable the lots and serial number and the expiration option available in the settings menu of the platform. These options can be seen under the traceability menu.
Furthermore, the multi-step routes option should also be enabled which allows the users to define the routes of operation which will allow dedicated product moves.
The removal strategies in Odoo are mainly defined by three strategies which are FIFO, LIFO, and FEFO.
FIFO: First in first out the operation acts as a queue where the initially purchased products are sold first.
LIFO: Last in First out, described as the opposite of FIFO where the last purchased products are sold out.
FEFO: The first expiry first out, the products are sold out based on the expiration date of the products.
As the FIFO rules are set the product should be defined based on the lost or serial numbers which can be described under the respective products. Under the inventory menu, the user can set the tracking as by lots or by serial numbers.
As the tracking is set to describe the inventory operations let's purchase a product. In the purchase, the module creates quotations for the product and validates the delivery. On validating, the user needs to define the product serial/ lot number.
The lots and serial numbers will be described in the traceability report of the respective purchase order.
To showcase the operation let’s create another purchase order for the same product and validate it after providing different serial/ lot numbers.
The traceability report will showcase the details of the respective purchase order.
The user can view the current stock of the respective product under the warehouse menu and navigate to the current stock of the respective warehouse. The user can see that the product stock along with the purchase order and the serial/lot number details are being described.
To depict the operation of the removal strategy sets creates a sales order for the same product under the sales module. As the sales order has been created for the respective product and is validated under the delivery operation the user can view the lot/serial number associated which will be depicted as the initial one created on the same product upon purchase in this context. This is because the removal strategy is set as FIFO where the first purchased product is sold out first.
In the case of the FEFO operations, the product removal is based on the expiration date of the product, which can be defined under the product description by enabling the expiration date option of the product. In addition, the date of the expirations, best before, removal, and alert date can be mentioned for the product on the platform.