Inventory Cycle Counts

The best way to maintain an accurate inventory is to continually count your inventory. That is, count part of your inventory every day, and count each item several times per year.


Dynamics GP has an easy to use process that will assist you in making cycle counts. There are basically two steps:


Create a Stock Count Schedule (Transactions >> Inventory >> Stock Count Schedule)


Complete and post a Stock Count Entry (Transactions >> Inventory >> Stock Count Entry)


There are a variety of ways to create a Stock Count Schedule. You will want to use the “Mass Add” feature on the Stock Count Schedule screen. I’m guessing these are the three most popular ways to select items to include on the Stock Count Schedule:


ABC Code (Run the ABC Wizard to assign codes to items: Tools >> Routines >> Inventory >> Item ABC Analysis)


Item Class


Next Stock Count Date (Set up the Stock Calendar: Tools >> Setup >> Inventory >> Stock Calendar, and assign the “Next Count Date”: Cards >> Inventory >> Count Cycle Assignment)

Once you've created the Stock Count Schedule, you will click the "Start Count" button to activate the count. You will be prompted to print out the stock count sheets. When the count is activated, a "snapshot" of the inventory quantities for the items is saved. The actual count results will be compared against this "snapshot". This is a big advantage, because it will allow normal activities in GP to continue while the count is being completed, entered, and analyzed. You will need to be mindful of the physical movement of goods so that the count results are not adversely affected.

The actual results are entered into the Stock Count Entry screen. This entry screen can be saved and reopened to allow for entry and analysis of results as soon as they are available. The "Unposted Trx" and "Trx History" buttons, open transaction queries that can help you find track down discrepancies caused by timing issues and errant stock movement.

Once you have completely entered your count results and analyzed variances, you can process the entry; the variance transaction will be created, and the count items will be released for the next count.

This is a good way to keep up on your inventory counts. Try it out.

See my video to see it in action.

Identify Items That Don't Sell

I initially came across this gem on the Dynamics GP public newsgroup.

Mohammad Daoud provides a nice SQL query to identify inventory items that have not been selling, i.e. slow moving items. My experience is that this is information that many businesses could use. His post is here.

In-Transit Inventory Transfer

Have you used the In-Transit Inventory Transfer functionality in Dynamics GP 10? Have you found any documentation on it? Probably not. This functionality was adopted from the Field Service series and provides the ability to specify an in-transit inventory location when transferring inventory between locations. Probably the greatest benefit of this is that it allows the receiving location to manage the incoming transfer; to account for overages and shortages, etc.

So how does it work? It’s basically a two-step process:

1.) Create an In-Transit Transfer entry: Transactions >> Inventory >> In-Transit Transfer Entry
2.) Create a Receiving entry: Transactions >> Purchasing >> Receivings Transaction Entry

Two things to keep in mind:

1.) Be sure to specify a “Via Site ID” in the In-Transit Transfer Entry; otherwise the transaction works similar to the Transfer Entry, and the in-transit site is not used. This begs the question, “Why does one specify a “Via Site ID” in Inventory Control?”

2.) Be sure to click the “Ship” button when you want to process the transaction.

Notice that the transactions reside in two different modules; which perhaps explains the lack of comprehensive documentation.