In this article I describe a new option that had been sorely missing. It is about changing the stock type of stock sitting in the Difference Analyzer.
This functionality appeared in the following support packages (Note: 0002180583):
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In short, here is the point. The Difference Analyzer (DA) is an intermediate «dumping ground» for all the differences found during physical inventory. The main purpose of the DA is to reduce the number of postings in the ERP system. The assumption is that if stock has been lost in one storage bin, it will most likely be found later in another one. The plus and the minus cancel each other out and no posting to the ERP system is needed. But there is a catch. There is no guarantee that the lost goods will ever be found. The eternal dilemma for stock managers is deciding when to post the differences to the ERP system. Post them too often and the whole idea of netting is lost. Post them too rarely and the lost stock is still recorded in ERP as existing, so shipping orders may keep arriving for it.
Faced with this problem, customers very often asked for an enhancement that would move stock counted as negative into a blocked stock type. SAP has now included this option in the standard functionality.
In the DA it is now possible to move stock to another stock type manually, at the press of a button:
The one thing I noticed is that when the stock is changed, it is changed only in the ERP system. Generally speaking, the DA was not made for humans. You do not get used to it straight away. In my example on the screenshot I counted a bin that held 474 pieces of a product. I counted 470. The shortage is 4 pieces.
Cumulatively I expect to see minus 4 pieces, but no:
The interesting part is that what I need to change the stock type for is exactly those minus 4 pieces. But as you can see, I can only change the stock type in the lower part of the screen, where the results of each individual count are shown. I can select either the row with +474 or the one with -470. This is misleading for the user. Ideally I would need to change the stock type of the cumulative difference of 4 pieces.
I select both rows at once and press change stock type to B2, and I get a warehouse task stating that 474 pieces went to B2 and 470 went back to F2, which adds up to 4 pieces in B2:
The stock type of the actual stock in the bin has not changed, though:
Let us see what went across to ERP:
Same thing: first the entire counted quantity of 474 pieces went to B2, then the quantity found, 470 pieces, went back to F2. Which adds up to 4 pieces in B2.
Now suppose we have found the 4 missing pieces. A difference appears in the DA, but with a different stock type:
In theory, for the two to cancel out I have to move it to stock type B2 as well, so I do:
And as you can see, the stock has been moved the other way round instead, from B2 to F2. That is, for negative differences SAP moves the stock into the target stock type you specified. For positive differences SAP moves it out of the target stock type into the current one. Let us look at ERP:
In ERP the quantities have cancelled out. All in all SAP keeps up its reputation and does everything confusingly and inside out, so that ordinary users never get bored.
Besides changing the stock type manually, you can use the report /SCWM/R_DIFF_ANA_STOCK_CHANGE, which looks like this:
I think all the selection fields are self-explanatory and need no further comment.
So, to sum up, the feature is useful, but using it is slightly confusing and takes some getting used to.