Hello Mr @lubos @Tut @Mabaega negative inventory invoicing is still a big problem for many of my clients and in my own business many Clients they don’t record purchase transactions while they record sales transactions which lead to a lot of negative inventory stock because of customers to lack enough knowledge of software and technology they comply that the problem is for the software should not allow negative inventory invoicing, while understand and respect the main reason of negative inventory invoicing I would like to advise the manager team and moderators to leave the feature in the system but to put it as an option feature so that someone who need that feature can enable the feature for specific inventory while the one who don’t need it can disable, I already sent the picture on how that feature can be updated and settled in my previous topics.
Hello @Matembe,
This isn’t asoftware problem, it’s a physical work problem.
The distinction must be made here because whatever discrepancy appearing in the software is a symptom of the problem and not the root cause. Treating symptoms almost always results in half baked results or even worse creates new problem somewhere down the line.
To illustrate this, suppose you successfully convinced Manager to stop negative inventory sales:
Your clients will stop nagging you about negative inventory balances.
On the flip side, a new complaint (possibly even more serious one) that they are not able to sell items on the spot. This is becauase the root cause which you succefully identified here was not fixed:
This is even worse, since you never solved the problem at the purchasing cycle and instead imported this problem into your sales cycle, which never had it to begin with and left the root problem untreated until a sale has been lost or delayed, in which case, everybody in the business has to backpaddle in panic to solve a minor issue which is holding the business hostage.
In either case, the solution would be to treat the root cause by ensuring that purchases are being entered properly without spreading the problem over as many departments as possible.
Looking at this from cost/benfit perspective, it turns out that the solution to negative inventory is periodic physical stock take an adjustment, which is a strong corrective internal control that is a healthy business practice.
The cost of blocking physical sale is delayed or lost sales, especially in retail since the selling process must be quick and does not offer sufficient time for the salesman to defer to warehousing/purchasing while keeping the sale on hold. In many circumstances that doesn’t work.
This full coupling of sales business cycle to purchasing cycle will only result in inaction.
I understand that that is why always I have been advising manager team to leave the feature in the system but to put it as an option feature that can be enabled or disabled any time according to user demand I didn’t say the feature should be removed put it as an Option feature leave the for customer to decide on his/her own either to use it or not.
Where do you suggest this option to appear? As a global Setting or per Inventory item?
As a user, I don’t oppose giving the user the option as long as it doesn’t force users to a rigid negative stock control.
As a moderator, I see that this specific feature has been requested one too many times without it making it into ideas
I will promote this topic, however, I cannot guarantee that this into the developer’s to do list since he will have many other considerations to make before accepting or rejecting.
Thank you for your consideration I hope will work out positively.