Does anyone have any solutions for accounting for inventory that we don’t own stored at drop ship vendor’s warehouses? The goal is to have visibility into product availability for drop ship items.

@Nick Would you consider this inventory as consigned?

I have not used this feature but this sounds a lot like consignment but at a vendors warehouse. NetSuite Consignment Stock Management SuiteApp might be able to help. The prob with just using virtual warehouse or bins is prob that you are going to see the inv show up in you account even if you wipe to 0$ value. And 0$ value will hurt COGS reporting

@Roy L I would not, we do not own the inventory until we place the PO. The inventory can be purchased by other partners of theirs.

how will you be updated of current stock?

Currently there is a daily feed, considering some direct integration.

and update the value CSV or other meathods

@redfishdev Could our fulfillments impact that field? Could you define structured data?

structed means its in an excel document or xml or something easily parsed and not an email from Jan saying we gottabout 5 of this and maybe 3 of those

Then yes, it is structured.

you could have some script to real time run a saved search of open sales orders with that item on it and know the variance and availability. real time will make your sales orders UI slower to load but maybe not much depending on SO volume

It seems like we are in alignment from what I have already proposed. The stakeholders requesting this project keep using the language “virtual sub-inventory”, and they want to behave like native inventory does in NS. Trying to do my due diligence to ensure there isn’t an option available for that.

then I would still look into consignment that has a scripted daily reconciliation of the inventory based upon the daily feed. Consigned inventory is something on site which you would put in "virtual" warehouse (vendor address) or "virtual" bin but should not affect your accounting. but the crux will be when you order it and how having this consigned inventory affects drop ship. I would see if NS will give you temp access in sandbox to play if you really wanted due diligence

I will look into that, thank you much!

I'm a little late to this one. I think the use of the word “accounting” is problematic. Do you just require “visibility” of your vendors inventory considering your and other partner transactions will do the actual accounting.

Yes, visibility defined as the ability to see QTY available per SKU.

Custom Record: Map your sku to their sku, along with qty box. Automate the updating of their csv (or api) to keep the custom records updated. This will allow you to pull searches on it, etc.

@mightyd3 @Nick custom record is the easy solution but I suspect he wants to see the inventory while creating a SO. maybe a custom field, maybe consignment. we dont really know his reqs

Loop the lines and ping the custom record to check qty. If you custom record contains multiple vendors per mapping, you can even dictate which vendor you set on the line.

@mightyd3 makes sense, but what about seeing "avail" inventory on SO?

Depends. 1 vendor or multiple. Too many questions. initially i'd think about sourcing that info to custitem or line field.

@redfishdev @mightyd3 no need to see on the SO at this time. Primary purpose is for visibility into inventory levels by SKU. @mightyd3 what is the value of a custom record for this scenario over a simple custom field?