Dears,
batches alone are significant in healthcare, food, automotive industry just to name a few.
Since we cannot force vendors to come up with unique batch numbers, actual design is seriously flawed. Batch number is a property of Item and can only be unique itemwise. When I receive items, I need to record the batch names as item_code-batch_number . My vendors are using date codes as batch numbers and they coincide with even their own product portfolio. Reporting with such a scheme causes incompatibility and traceability problems.
Let us consider this towards a solution. Other ERP vendors (not that I prefer their approcah) treat the batches as separate items. We do not need to do that. Uniqueness key need to be together with item code or defining correctly in the item hierarchy will help.
I understand that the batch number has to be related to the item.
I buy many items from many suppliers … These suppliers are required by law to create some standard batch numbers … So the chance to find some equal batch number between Items is huge.
As an example, I buy sodium albumin and fetal bovine serum from the same supplier … They have to start their batchs, by law, with a 3-digit number / 2-digit sequence of the year.
In my stock, I have from both items, lots 005/18, 007 and 008/18.
How do I register this?
I thought about putting the number of the item before, but … I may have problems with auditing.
Is it difficult to make this association to the Item, considering that the unique batch logic is not very efficient?
The answer to that will determine if the ErpNext is moving in the technically and scientifically correct direction or not. The latter will dictate a different future for this wonderful product.
You can add a field called ‘supplier batch number’ in the purchase receipt. You record the supplier’s batch number in this field while receiving the item, and generate your own batch number for internal purposes. Thus you will have a mapping between supplier batch number and your batch number. You get to maintain the uniqueness of batch across items and suppliers and also retain traceability with supplier’s batch number. That’s how we solved this issue, and it’s proven to be efficient.