Use consignment selling when you want to sell product from an alternate location, such as a customer's job site. You must first set up the customer to receive consigned inventory, and then you consign inventory to a customer by entering it on a consignment order. Once the inventory is consigned, it is transferred out of your available inventory and into your customer's. You do not bill the customer until the inventory is used or sold from the consigned location.
For products that are routinely consigned to a customer, you can automate the consignment process. You do this by first setting minimum and maximum inventory levels in Customer Maintenance for each regularly consigned product. Once inventory levels are established, use the Suggested Consignment Auto Transfer utility to compare the currently consigned inventory against the minimum and maximum levels.
Note: You can determine inventory levels using a manual count, or through remote data collection (RDC) in the system. For more information about remote data collection, see theRemote Data Collection Overview.
You view the utility's suggested consignment transfers using the Suggested Consignment Transfer Queue. You can create consignment orders from this queue, or by entering orders manually.
Finally, use the Customer Consignment Report to view customer consignment activity for a specified range of dates.
The sale of customer-consigned product contributes to the product's forecasted demand. Therefore, order points, line points, and economic order quantities accrue and allow these items to be evaluated for automated purchasing and transfers.