Sage 100

Is it true that Sage will allow an item to have the same serial number twice? I'm seeing a client receive a serial number on an RMA and then (mistakenly) do an inventory adjustment for the same serial number. The end result is that the serial number has quantity = 2. Doesn't this break the logic of using serial numbers? I've always understood that the serial number/item relationship is 1 to 1. If this is WAD can someone share the logic so I can try and explain it to the customer? Thank you!

Found a thread on Sage City that confirms this is WAD - now I'm hoping someone can share a reason why it might work this way so I can at least offer an excuse...

Generally speaking, I've seen this happen when a serial number hasn't been updated in the first transaction yet, making it still available to be picked for the second transaction. What's a WAD?

WAD = Working As Designed. I agree that Sage won't let you distribute the serial number more than once but it apparently lets you bring in the same serial number more than once (in this case, once as an RMA receipt and once as an inventory adjustment).

Somewhat surprising but I'm sure a master developer or someone with scripting skills could create some sort of validation if it really is happening often. Or you could write some sort of report and use visual cut or sage alerts and workflow to watch for it happening to alert someone of the issue. Again I'm not sure the business case one would make to call it WAD but I also don't work at Sage.

If you leave out the inventory adjustment portion for a moment - can you receive in a duplicate serial number when one already exists ?

@WayneSchulz 's comment got me re-testing everything in my systems and I find that **my** version 2017 does not allow me to receive via PO or Inventory Adjustment to a serial number that is already on hand when using demo data (yay - that is how we want it to work). So now I have to determine why my client's system is acting differently. They are customized to the hilt to it could take a bit to filter through everything happening. Thanks for everyone's input!

Is that there for companies that rent out items? So they can sell it and receive it back in?

@KateKrueger I have a customer on 2016.5 who uses serial numbers almost exclusively for electronic components. I'm thinking if it were possible to double receive something that they'd have done it by now ... let me know if you get stuck and I can ask the woman at the site who does the RMA whether she runs into issues with the S/N. I am pretty sure they are creating unique serials because they often tag on an A or B to an S/N if the system won't let them re-use.

I'm not sure about all processes, but Sage will definitely let you receive the same serial number into 2 different warehouses.

You are totally right that it seems to be warehouse dependent. If the user changes warehouses the system doesn't care if it is the same serial number. I will review the client information and see if that is what they are doing. It still doesn't resolve the question of why Sage would allow it when serial numbers are supposed to be for a single item only. Unless someone can think of why you would need the same serial number for the same item in 2 warehouses? That sounds like a physical count nightmare.

It makes no sense to me...when my client first reported it to me, I thought they were doing something wrong. I have no idea why Sage would think this was okay to do!

@KateKrueger, this problem has been there for a long time, sadly, and it is related to the warehouse. As long as it's being received into a different warehouse it is apparently OK, and I can think of absolutely no business reason that this should be allowed. This caused us great consternation with the Service Center product. At one point I wrote an override for adjustments to disallow it, but I haven't had that code in a long time. I believe that DSD has an enhancement that forces a serial number to be unique for a given item across warehouses.

It is strange that this is working as (poorly) designed but I'm glad to know there are potential resolutions for it. My client confirmed that their system is allowing them to duplicate the same serial number in the same warehouse and same bin location. They have ACS MultiBin and a few of the Scanco offerings so it might have something to do with those applications. I don't have a test system with the extended solutions installed yet so I haven't been able to test yet.