Hi All, Does anyone have the best way to move raw materials to a specific customer? We have about 45 raw materials that we want to come in for 1 customer. We will use these raws over the course of 4 months. My thought was that we place an inventory status change on each material that is coming in. We make a specific status for that customer but I’m unfamiliar with status change behavior. If we make a status custom example: customer1material Will Netsuite automatically allocate that material to anyone who needs it? Since it’s a common material?

Honestly, it might be best to make it just a new item number. I've tried using Statuses or even Lots in the past to segment Inventory for different purposes and it's not ideal

I would agree with the above. Management and risk reduction would be much better with a new SKU.

If you create work orders and firm the commitment of the raw material?

I’ve implemented on a lot level (custom field to track customer name who owns it), but only works if your items are lot numbered & need to have lot costing, since customer owned lots are value $0, others have a value. If not, then separate item that also tracks the customer who owns it. Whole inventory needs to be $0 value, so works with average costing too

@Parth is right it is much easier with Lot Numbered inventory because you can create an Item Number field on the Inventory Detail sublist to follow the qtys for that Lot Number until they are consumed. Personally, I am not a fan of creating new part numbers for identical parts. That approach creates a nightmare when doing counts and seems to always cause a great deal of confusion in my experience. With your use case creating new parts doesn't offer you any additional internal controls in NetSuite either. I would highly recommend a separate storing area for those customer supplied items and increase your prices for that customer to store their inventory for them. I can think of a design that would control that inventory for you while not having to create new SKU's for every item. It would involve the Inventory Status, 2 U/E scripts, the Customer Part Number feature, and a couple custom fields.