Shortage Management - Setup

The setup of shortage management can be done at three levels.

1. At the sales module level (Sales and Receivable page for sales module, Purchase and Payables page for the purchasing module).
2. At the customer level (for purchases at the supplier level).
3. At the ship-to address level (no equivalent on the purchasing part). When two settings are contradictory, it is the most “fine” level which wins (so Recipient Address>Customer>Sales & Receivables settings).

There are three ways of managing shortages,

• Standard mode: This is the standard management mode of Business Central, without automated management of shortages. The user will have to manually modify update the quantity if they wish (the quantity initially ordered is not kept in the specific field.)
• Change order quantity mode: In this mode the quantity ordered is automatically adjusted when a shortage is identified (when we validate a shipment or receipt with a shortage.) The quantity initially ordered is also kept in a specific field. This allows you to quickly close the order as the shortage is identified.
• Manual Adjustment mode: Allows users to manually validate and adjust inventory and warehouse document lines for shortages. The quantity is updated to reflect the actual shipped or received amount, and any deviation is tracked.

Note that when you configure the outage management mode you will also find a fourth possible option. This option called Default is to be used only on the customer/vendor or ship-to address level. If you wish to define a general setting and only manage exceptions. It is possible to define a management mode Standard, Change Order Quantity or Manual Adjustment in the configuration of the sales or purchases module. Newly created customers/vendors/ship-to addresses systematically inherit the Default mode referring to the “higher” setting. This allows you to adjust only the cases of customers/ship-to addresses that need to operate in the other mode.

The choice of management mode is made in the Shortage management method field.

This field is available on the following pages,

Limitations

• Return Orders (Sales/Purchase Return Orders) are not supported for shortage management. All returns will be handled with standard behavior.

• Lines with negative quantity are considered standard and not supported by shortage management.