Sage 100

One of my dormant projects has arisen. This user sells electronic equipment. Example, **BASIC-COMPUTER** - Monitor (serialized) - CPU (serialized) - Keyboard - Cable - Manual **PRO-COMPUTER** - Monitor (serialized) - CPU (serialized) - Pro Keyboard - Cable - Pro mouse - Manual Presently we sell them as kits which have worked just fine. Very simple and we've modified the SO forms to present the items. The problem is that the kits are not currently pre-packaged. So to ship an ABC-123 the picker pulls a serialized item, perhaps another serialized item, cable(s), power supply, etc. What they want to do is pull all this into a box (essentially pre-package the items from the kit). I think the issue is that some of these kits can (will) have more than one serialized component which makes up the kit. I'm not sure what the best approach would be to build these (we use BOM) and place them on the shelf. The issue is that during a BOM build we need to know the serial numbers (naturally) but when we sell them we would need to track each item in that pre-built kit via serial number for warranty/repair and possible defect notification purposes. I don't think it would work if I did production entry for multiple-serialized items to create one item AND to expect that in the future I could do warranty/repair on the serialized components. My thought is that I need to somehow continue to use kits for tracking purposes. It seems like the way to do this is to continue assigning the serial number via scanning the product on the way out. However, I'm blanking on what the workflow would look like although I guess we might add the serial number(s) on the outside of the box (and hope nobody opens and swaps the box contents). Is there a solution where the user could scan one barcode on the outside of the box and the item number(s) and serial number(s) are automatically entered into Sage shipping data entry? I know kits will (and are) doing this now with the exception of the shipper having to stop and enter in the individual serial numbers. They are headed toward using Scanforce for WMS Thanks for any thoughts

I don't think it would work if I did production entry for multiple-serialized items to create one item AND to expect that in the future I could do warranty/repair on the serialized components. "" Is the warranty on the finished product or is there a separate warranty on each component? If the warranty is on the finished good, ie if anything breaks within two years we will replace it free of charge, then there is no reason to track the warranty on a serialized component.

Sounds like this is an ideal situation for Work Order, but not recommending going down that road. I think that kits are your best option now, if there is a need to track the individual serial numbers for the units sold.

@DougHiggs there may potentially be two (or more) serialized items that they might warranty. A typical config might be: - Computer (serialized) - Webcam (serialized) - Keyboard (non-serialized) - Power cable & cords (non-serialized) They'd like to put this all in one product package and let the shipper swipe just the package barcode(s) and not have to at the time of shipment pull additional components and enter in additional serial numbers. This works beautifully now as BOM kits except they are prompted at the time of shipment to enter the serial number of serialized components. They have not yet gone to fully automated entry so now the shipper just writes the S/N on the pick sheet and sends it back into the office for shipment/invoicing. As the company grows it becomes less desirable to have pickers pulling out the components needed for various kits. They see it as faster and more accurate to build these kits ahead of time and place them on their shelves. Normally that's no big deal except in instances where a kit combines two or more serialized items into one finished good (BOM Production). At that point I think I lose the ability to treat the component serialized items separately for warranty or recall purposes. One interim workaround they are thinking of is to reduce the number of components by maybe pre-packaging into a plastic bag the non-serialized items into sub-assemblies (keyboard, power cable, manual) so pulling that portion of the order is faster.

You may check to see if the enhanced lot control from SCANCO (ASCG) provides a mechanism for this.

License Plating from Scanco may also be an option.

I thought about license plating also, but I thought license plating was typically used for pallet identification. I guess a license plate could be attached to a single item. For example, a pallet could have several different SKUs on it. Scanning the license plat would identify all of the SKUs. The license plate makes it easier and more accurate to ship and receive as the user doesn't have to scan or count each package. I don't believe ScanForce has a license plating module yet. I know they are working on it, or it may have been recently released and I am not aware of it. Scanco does have license plating as @MichelleForsey mentioned.

Good thoughts! Ultimately, I believe they will want a specific serialized item to be identifiable for warranty/repair purposes. They don't really understand the issue of serializing some components and then how using a component in a BOM Production entry is going to lose most visibility of serialized components. I believe, with 3rd party mods, you can still run reports to see who bought a finished good with a certain serialized component. However, that's not going to give them to future ability to track that serialized component through something like Service Center. As of now I'm thinking the box would have to have serial numbers for serialized items on the outside and the shipper needs to scan those items during shipping. In essence, it's still a kit but the components have already been put into one box with a label on the outside that contains the main kit part # which they scan then they have separate labels for the serial numbers of any serialized components inside. This is very close to what they are doing now. The trick here would be in how to get that label to print. Perhaps we have a two part label - one is the item S/N that gets affixed and the other label is a serial number which gets affixed to any type of box that they use to sell a kit. Still thinking on this before my meeting next week. Thanks!

Another gotcha that I haven't been able to overcome. - I could create a box with a label for the kit item and with some effort probably also the serial number of whatever we put inside. - I'm stuck on how to answer the question of ""so, how many of boxed kit item ABC do we have on the shelf?"" - Without doing a production entry or using WO (neither of which would appear to track multiple serialized components) there doesn't seem to be a way to easily know stock status of a boxed up kit. - I thought about using multi-bin and transferring components to a ""assembled"" bin - perhaps even giving the bin the number of the main kit item. But this seems like lots of work and may not scale well with many transactions. It doesn't seem like Sage 100 works well for production entry of a BOM item where I may have multiple serialized items in