How to handle Stockrooms

[Hard Hats]

Hello Community!

I have a customer with a somewhat unique requirement: they order all of their hardware from one vendor. The vendor supplies a running list of all orders (set up as a scheduled import), including device type, serial number and asset tag.

The orders are housed in the vendor's warehouse until such time as my customer calls to get certain items delivered. Here's the problem: the vendor's list of orders lists their location as the 'stockroom'. 

The customer would like to automatically populate various 'virtual' stockrooms (by device type?) based on the vendor's order list even though all items are physically housed in one location.

I'm thinking initially: create a transform map script that uses the device type or model as identified in the vendor's orders file to direct these 'in stock' assets to their correct virtual stockrooms.

Has anyone had experience setting up something similar?

Much Appreciated!

[Matthew_13]

Yes my friend 🙂 , this is actually a pattern a lot of customers end up with, and your thinking is on the right track.

Since everything is physically sitting in the vendor’s warehouse, the key is deciding whether stockroom = physical location or stockroom = logical grouping for your customer. Once that’s clear, the rest falls into place.

What I’ve seen work well in practice:

• Keep the import automated, just like you’re planning.

• Use the transform map to route assets based on device type, model, or category.

• Assign them to different “virtual” stockrooms (for example, Laptop Pool, Desktop Pool, Monitor Pool), even though they’re physically in the same place.

Your idea of using a transform script to look at device type/model and set the stockroom accordingly is a very common and reasonable approach.

A couple of tips from experience:

• Try not to hardcode a lot of if/else logic. It’s usually cleaner to have a small mapping table (device type → stockroom) that the transform script looks up.

• Keep some indication of the physical warehouse/vendor somewhere on the asset (location or vendor field), so reporting and audits don’t get confusing later.

• Make sure you’re coalescing correctly (serial number, asset tag, or vendor order ID) so you don’t create duplicate assets on every import run.

As long as the customer understands that these are “logical” stockrooms and not physical ones, this setup works well and is easy to maintain.

@Hard Hats - Please mark Accepted Solution with Thumbs Up if you find Helpful 🙂

[jonsan09]

Sounds like you should be able to configure a stockroom record for the Vendor's location (alm_stockroom). Then either use an existing stockroom type (alm_stockroom_type) or creating a new stockroom type to identify the vendor stockroom. You'll probably want to configure the flags for 'external' and 'shipment required' on stockroom type record.