How do I know an entire shipment did not return?

All Asset NOT Returned, found under Shipping.

THIS REPORT LOCATES AN ASSET NOT CHECK MARKED RECEIVED FOR PROJECTS WITH A CLOSE DATE UP TO ONE YEAR OLD.

Several sites have expressed a similar concern. Perhaps everyone can take some solace in the fact that your customer issue is not unique to you. You ship materials out to a dealer, distributor, sales rep, etc. and nothing is returned. If the shipment comes back, you are prompted to check it back in and missing items are identified. However in the most challenging scenario nothing at all returns and you don’t have the natural prompt of a shipment returning to flag your attention. Then as is often the case the Project’s shipment becomes lost in the cracks. Worse, because of the automatic return to Inventory function in the system the Assets are made Available and there is the risk a NOT returned item will be selected for use.

Now the system provides a proactive way to identify lost items more rapidly and guard against the situation described above. Run the report All Assets NOT Returned at least once a week, more often if you have very tight blackout dates in your Asset settings for Days Before & After and even more importantly if you have moved the Days to return to Warehouse setting towards a zero setting. (If you don’t know your site's current value for this setting please contact us for confirmation.)

By running this report on a regular basis, you will see if something is unaccounted, by looking at the Project’s Close day to determine if it should be back under normal circumstances. If so and it is AWOL you can now go to Case#/Id for the Asset in question and mark the delinquent Unit Number Unavailable. This solves the selection issue. The Asset will remain on the report as a reminder for a year till you resolve the issue.

The report, as noted, looks back one full year from the current date before it “hides” and Asset from displaying on the report. If you are keeping up with the report and don’t want to be constantly reminded of the older NOT returned Assets you can use the date range function of the Report to limit how far you look back. This setting should keep in mind the Days after and Return to Warehouse settings unique to your site. By making it a business practice to run it at least weekly will really keep on top of missing Assets.

Tip: Assign one person in your shipping department this task as a weekly assignment. Coupled with a solid practice of actually receiving and the use of a return shipment’s final flag you’ll have a very effective inventory management protocol that will keep everyone informed and avoid embarrassing customer situations. PS you’ll look cool and proactive to your customer as a side benefit.