Release notes

Check which version you have in Extension Management: search for it in Business Central and find Bitta Consignment by Bitta Apps, LLC.

Version 1.0

The first release. It needs Business Central online, version 28.0 or later, and is available in English in all countries.

Vendor consignment

• Consignment Ledger for vendor-owned stock, separate from the item ledger, inventory value and general ledger.
• Consignment receipts with locations, bins and variants. A receipt can be received in parts: Qty. to Receive and Quantity Received on the lines, one posted document per posting, and the receipt stays open until everything is received.
• Serial numbers, lots and packages, with expiration and warranty dates, on Item Tracking Lines (Ctrl+Alt+I), the same page as on purchase and sales lines, for consignment documents and the Consignment Journal. A line holds one item. Assign Serial Nos., Assign Lot No., Get Consignment Stock, Calculate Expected and Scan Lines fill its item tracking. Release and posting stop when the tracked quantity differs from the line's quantity, with Set line quantity to the tracked quantity to fix it.
• Consignment adjustments with reason codes, transfers between locations and bins, and returns to the vendor. Returns, transfers and ownership changes can be posted in parts: Qty. to Handle and Quantity Handled on the lines, and Qty. to Handle per serial number or lot on Item Tracking Lines.
• Get Consignment Stock has a Qty. to Handle column, so you take part of an open entry directly.
• Physical counts with calculated and counted quantities and a printable count sheet. Count Item Tracking Lines shows the expected and counted quantity of every serial number or lot: add a found unit as a new row, or count a missing one 0.
• Count Consignment Stock: one action for every kind of location. It opens the count the location uses, already filled: a consignment physical count, a site count, or the physical inventory journal (the warehouse physical inventory journal at directed locations) at a Warehouse Mode location.
• Undo Receipt and Undo Return to Vendor on posted consignment receipts and returns to the vendor give the units and their serial numbers and lots back to the open document.
• Consignment Journal for positive and negative adjustments and reclassifications, with journal batches.
• Sales of consigned stock on normal quotes and orders with the CONSIGN purchasing code, as drop shipments: vendor proposal, Select Consignment Stock, automatic FIFO or FEFO tracking, automatic purchase orders on release or posting, and undo of shipments.
• Commitment that stops a serial or lot from being sold twice and quantities from exceeding the vendor's stock, with the Consignment Stock FactBox and the Consignment Stock page.
• Settlement terms per vendor: purchase price or a percentage of the sales price, with per-item overrides on the item vendor catalog.
• Vendor settlement with one purchase invoice per vendor, and the vendor consignment statement.
• Customer returns back into the vendor's consignment stock through a linked purchase return order.
• Ownership change to buy vendor stock into your own inventory, and aging rules per vendor.
• Buy Out at Consumption: production (consumption and production journals, flushing), assembly orders and project usage buy the missing quantity out of vendor consignment stock automatically, with an ownership change posted together with the consumption and settled like any buy-out. Turn it on in Consignment Setup; each vendor card can say Use Setup, Yes or No.
• Replenishment requests to vendors: consignment reorder point and maximum inventory per item and location on the stockkeeping unit, Suggest Replenishment Requests from the vendor card or the request list, and the Consignment Replenishment Request document (Open, Released, Sent) that prints and sends with its own report selection usage. Create Receipt turns it into the consignment receipt.
• Warehouse Mode locations, where vendor stock is native inventory at zero value, so warehouse receipts, put-aways, picks, shipments, counts and scanners handle it, and vendors are paid through item charges on the settlement invoice. Each receipt posting creates its own zero-price purchase order. A guide checks a location before it turns Warehouse Mode on.
• Own Inventory on the item card, next to Inventory: the units you own, without the vendor stock at Warehouse Mode locations (stock at your customer consignment sites is yours and is included). Choose the value to see the item ledger entries it counts. It is also a column on the item list (add it with Personalize) and the first row of the item's Consignment Stock FactBox, and shows only when a location uses Warehouse Mode.
• Consignment Bin Contents with vendor and own stock side by side in each bin, the Consignment Pick List and the Consignment Bin Count Sheet.

Customer consignment

• Consignment sites created from a customer's ship-to address, copying a template location and its inventory posting setup. The consignment actions on the customer card show as soon as you switch on Consignment Customer.
• Suggest Site Replenishment from stockkeeping unit reorder points, creating transfer orders.
• Usage reports, typed, scanned or imported from Excel, that create and optionally post the sales invoice. The invoice carries the serial numbers and lots with their expiration dates.
• Site counts that invoice or write off shortages and post surpluses.
• Preview Posting on usage reports and site counts shows the item ledger entries and the sales invoice's entries without posting. Posting asks whether to open the sales invoice it created.
• Return Site Stock with transfer orders back to the warehouse, and the customer consignment statement.
• Consignment Stock at Sites (LCY) on the customer card and the Customer Statistics FactBox, and the option Include Consignment Stock in Credit Check (in Consignment Setup and per customer) that counts it in the credit limit check.

Scanning

• Scan Lines on usage reports, site counts and consignment physical counts: scan item barcodes (item references), item numbers, serial numbers, lots and bins with a barcode scanner or the camera of a phone or tablet. Each scan adds to its line, and the page lists every scan with what it added or why it was refused. A lot adds one unit per scan or asks for the quantity (Ask for Lot Quantity on Scan in Consignment Setup).

Visibility and alerts

• Consignment entries in Find entries from posted shipments, receipts and invoices, in the serial and lot search and in posting previews.
• Consignment Ledger Entries actions on items, vendors, sales and purchase orders and posted documents; FactBoxes on the item, vendor and customer cards; cues on the Order Processor and Purchasing Agent role centers.
• Lots Expiring Soon cue on the Order Processor and Purchasing Agent role centers, for vendor stock and your stock at customer sites, with the Expiring Consignment Stock list and a role center notification. Set the days in Consignment Setup > Expiry Alert Days.
• The Consignment Settlement FactBox on purchase invoices and posted purchase invoices, and more figures on the vendor and customer FactBoxes.
• When posting or releasing finds several problems, they are listed on the Error Messages page, as for sales and purchase documents, with Open related record for each. A single problem shows with its action, such as Set value to work date.

Documents and reports

• Document prints with Word layouts, report selection usages and Send: Consignment Settlement Summary (per settlement invoice, draft or posted), Consignment Return Note, Consignment Transfer Note, Consignment Count Result (physical counts and site counts), Consignment Usage Confirmation, Consignment Site Delivery Note, Consignment Replenishment Request, and the year-end Consignment Stock Confirmation letter to vendors and customers.
• Posted consignment documents have one line per document line. Item Tracking Lines on a posted line shows its serial numbers and lots, and the printed notes and count sheets list them under each line.
• Reports: Consignment Receipt Note, Consignment Physical Count Sheet and Consignment Site Count Sheet, Consignment Stock Report, Consignment Aging and Expiry, and Consignment Customer Statement (Word to send, Excel to analyze).
• The Consignment Pick List and the Consignment Bin Count Sheet filter like other Business Central reports, and the stock and aging reports filter on more fields, such as lot and serial number.
• Scheduled statements: a monthly job queue entry (Schedule Statements in Consignment Setup) emails the consignment statement of the last month to every vendor and customer with Send Statement on, with one job queue log line per recipient.
• Analysis reports in Excel: Consignment Unsettled Liability (month-end accrual), Consignment Sales and Margin, Consignment Turnover Analysis, Consignment Lot and Serial Trace (recall) and Consignment Site Stock.
• A Power BI template with eight report pages, read live from Business Central.

Setup and licensing

• Assisted setup with optional demo data and a step that shows the number series of every document type, and the permission sets BAA CONS READ, BAA CONS EDIT and BAA CONS SETUP.
• Licensing per seat and month, with a 30-day trial for 3 seats. Sales, drop shipments, returns, pages and reports work without a license. When a user's seat was removed less than 30 days ago, Choose another user gives the seat to someone else.

Known limits in 1.0

• Buy Out at Consumption does not work at Warehouse Mode locations: consumption and project usage of vendor stock there are refused, so post an ownership change first.
• At a location without Warehouse Mode, vendor stock is not handled by put-aways, picks or warehouse shipments; bins are recorded on the consignment entries. Warehouse Mode locations handle it natively.
• Existing vendor stock at a location cannot be converted to Warehouse Mode; turn it on for a location without stock.
• A serial number that a customer returned and that you kept in your own inventory cannot be received into consignment again while it is in your own stock.
• With Availability Check set to Warning or None, two orders can promise the same stock; the first one posted gets it.
• With Post Usage Invoices on, sales invoice approvals and the invoice posting preview are skipped.

The full list with workarounds is on the pages of each topic and in Troubleshooting and FAQ.

Planned

Ideas for the next version, to be confirmed with customer feedback:

• API pages for stock, ledger entries, usage reports and receipts, for EDI providers and hospital systems.
• Counts and replenishment for any external location, such as sales reps' vans, trunk stock or your stock at a third-party warehouse.
• GS1 and UDI scanning: one scan of a GS1 DataMatrix fills the item, lot, serial number and expiration date.
• A self-billing layout for the settlement invoice (United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand).